ARI BETOF, EdD, MBA
Co-Founder, Partner
Dr. Ari Betof is the co-founder and partner of Mission & Data. He is a nationally recognized expert in the area of nonprofit organizational stewardship and sustainability.
Ari’s consulting work draws upon fifteen years of leadership and governance experience building thriving organizations and maximizing mission-aligned revenue growth. His facility with organizational effectiveness, group dynamics, and strategic planning is paired with his proven track record of cultivating high-impact change. Ari brings together skills in strategy, analysis, and organizational transformation with a nuanced understanding of fundraising, enrollment management and branding in support of his clients. He leverages expertise facilitating group process with diverse sets of stakeholders. Ari is an agile, savvy, and emotionally intelligent partner who builds trusting relationships, achieves results, develops others, and creates scalable systems.
Ari has served as an independent school trustee, head of school, administrator, and teacher. He began his career as a physics and mathematics teacher and coach. Ari understands multiple facets of independent school management, having held the administrative roles of Head of School, Chief Advancement Officer, Director of Enrollment Management, and Director of Strategic Planning. His experience includes working at day and boarding schools; schools as small as 50 students and as large as 1,500 students; single campus and multi-campus schools; single and multi-division schools; US-based schools and schools around the world; and religiously affiliated and nonsectarian schools.
Ari has been an instructor in University of Pennsylvania’s PennGSE Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership and Leadership Master’s Program. He has served as a mentor in Harvard University’s School Leadership Program, faculty member in the NAIS School Leadership Institute, and judge for the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards.
Ari's governance experience includes serving two terms on the Board of Directors of the Friends Council on Education (FCE) and as a member of FCE’s Development Committee and the National Friends Education Fund Working Group. He has also been a trustee of Newtown Friends School (Newtown, PA) and Cambridge Friends School (Cambridge, MA).
Ari is co-host of “EMA’s The Impossible Questions Podcast” with Christian Donovan. He has been a facilitator on more than a dozen webinars during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a panelist for Independent Schools on the Brink, a collaborative webinar co-hosted by 33-member associations across the country for more than 1,900 trustees and senior leaders. Ari is the author of numerous book chapters, research reports, and articles.
Ari’s clients include over one hundred independent schools, colleges, membership associations, educational nonprofits, and private sector companies.
Ari graduated with a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the Guilford College honors program. He earned his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on financial and organizational sustainability. His doctoral dissertation, “Leading in the Light: A Study of Financial and Organizational Sustainability of Friends Schools,” was awarded with distinction. Ari earned an MBA with distinction from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management where he was an Emerging Markets Institute Fellow and recognized as a Poets & Quants 2021 Best & Brightest EMBA. Ari continues to be a Cornell Johnson EMBA mentor and a mentor in Cornell’s Smith Family Business Initiative.
Ari, his wife, and two daughters live in Bucks County, PA.