Bernuth & Williamson
NGOs and their funders come to Bernuth & Williamson for assistance in solving complex organizational challenges. Diverse in terms of size, strategy, and sector, our clients all share a common commitment to improving their organizational effectiveness and increasing their mission impact.
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Douglas is a strategic communications specialist who focuses on helping organizations understand their positioning and engage their audiences. Since joining the firm in 2003, he has led a wide array of successful engagements with organizations, associations, and funders across sectors as diverse as environmental conservation, sustainable development, drug development, healthcare, education, and international relations. He takes particular pride in helping clients build collaborative relationships with those who matter most to their missions. Alongside his work with B&W, Douglas has developed additional expertise in the challenges that communities face with a changing climate, as well as the strategies that can be used for public engagement around these and other issues. Prior to his time with B&W, Douglas held various marketing and communications positions at The Nature Conservancy, where he directed outreach efforts for international programs and special initiatives, served as one of the organization’s spokespeople, and created a capacity building program for local partners. He also worked for many years in film and television production, and contributed stories as a freelance reporter for NPR.
Douglas holds a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Spanish from Indiana University, and a master’s degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is based in upstate New York, and in his spare time he enjoys spending time outdoors with family and friends, and trying to play the guitar.
Debbie Feinberg has over 25 years of experience in financial, human resources, and business processes. She started her career as an auditor with Deloitte & Touche LLP. She then moved to Arthur Andersen LLP in the role of Operations Manager for the Risk Consulting practices in the Mid-Atlantic region. She has worked as a consultant focusing on human resources, strategy, and implementation projects, including serving as interim COO/CFO for several organizations. Debbie was the VP of Finance for a large DC area arts institution with a $30 million dollar annual budget and most recently served as CFO of Parabilis, a $90 million private lending company which specializes in providing working capital to government contractors.
Debbie earned her B.S. in Accounting from the University of Maryland Honors Program. She has held both a CPA license and Professional Human Resource (PHR) certification. She serves on the DC board of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
David has been Managing Director of Bernuth & Williamson since 2002, working with leading nonprofits, foundations, and academic institutions around the world on issues of organizational strategy and effectiveness. In 2000, he was a visiting Senior Fellow in the philanthropy program at the Aspen Institute; earlier he held fellowships at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria and the Korea Development Institute in Seoul. Based in Washington, DC, he has taught nonprofit management at Georgetown University since 2001, training hundreds of nonprofit leaders in the U.S. and abroad through the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership. His research on building nonprofit capacity and measuring performance in nonprofits, which appeared in The McKinsey Quarterly, has been widely cited in the academic literature. Before joining B&W, he spent many years in senior management positions at the worldwide office of The Nature Conservancy, including terms as Director of Communications and Vice President for Marketing. His redesign of Nature Conservancy magazine won multiple awards from Folio. He was also the lead author of three organization-wide strategic plans and helped design two capital campaigns. He has served in leadership positions on the boards of many nonprofits and other philanthropic entities. Educated at the Phillips Exeter Academy, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University.