Jen Esterline

At the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Jen serves as Senior Vice President of Major Gifts, helping to lead Institute-wide fundraising strategy through cultivation and stewardship of major and transformational gifts, particularly across child, youth, and family systems. She plays a central role in designing and executing comprehensive fundraising strategies across the Institute, including a $100 million growth capital campaign, while building and managing relationships with institutional funders, national philanthropies, and individual donors. In close collaboration with program leaders, Jen also advances business development efforts that drive new initiatives and expand the Institute’s statewide and national strategy for student and educator mental health across the education continuum – from K-12 through higher education.

Jen has spent almost three decades working in the Texas nonprofit sector, first as a development director for nonprofit and higher education institutions and later as the executive director of the KDK-Harman Foundation, a private family foundation based in Austin. In 2010, Jen founded the state’s first ever grantmaker policy consortium of over 60 private family, corporate and community foundations across Texas working to promote, protect and improve Texas public and higher education through advocacy and public policy. Jen also served as director of policy at Educate Texas at the Communities Foundation of Texas, and as the founder and principal of Esterline Consulting, where she consulted with a number of philanthropic and nonprofit clients from across the state and nationally on issues of high-impact philanthropy, resource development, board development and management, strategic planning, coalition building, and effective advocacy and public policy strategies.

Jen completed her Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. She lives in Austin, Texas and is the proud mom of three boys.