Gautam Bastian

Operations Leader · Executive Advisor

Washington, DC gautamb@gmail.com 240-468-9638 LinkedIn

Summary

A strategic operations leader and executive advisor with more than 20 years of experience managing complex programs, organizational transitions, and multi-million-dollar portfolios across education, international development, research, and policy organizations. I have led large-scale initiatives at the World Bank and Harvard Business School, with expertise in operational excellence, governance, project management, and stakeholder engagement.

Experience

Operations Lead
Jul 2026 – present
Brooks Bawden Moore, LLC · Washington, DC
  • Building systems that strengthen service delivery, improve decision-making, and support operational effectiveness.
Director of Mission Advancement
Jul 2023 – Jun 2026
St. Jerome Academy · Hyattsville, MD
  • Retained ~90% of 53 donors through sustained organizational change, securing $2.2M in individual contributions and supporting an additional $1M foundation grant — bringing total campaign commitments to $3.2M toward a $4M goal.
  • Built a federal grant pipeline and centralized management of 6 public and private grants — growing grant revenue 50% and freeing capacity to pursue a new $200K federal grant for the first time.
  • Caught a ~10% structural budget shortfall traced to fees frozen since 2017; launched a scholarship fund campaign to begin closing the gap.
  • Helped establish a School Advisory Board and Finance Committee by aligning parish leaders, school leadership, parents, and donors — bridging siloed teams to create governance structures previously absent.
  • Provided strategic continuity across a $4M+ campus capital project through two leadership transitions, navigating legal, regulatory, and stakeholder complexity to reach county submission and approval.
  • Grew daily website traffic 156% and eliminated negative feedback by building communications infrastructure from scratch — 2 website rebuilds, 100+ written pieces, and 4 recurring content products.
  • Grew after-school program revenue 50% ($100K → $150K) and cut admin time 60% by redesigning billing from weekly to semester cycles.
Consultant
Jan 2023 – Jul 2023
World Bank · Washington, DC
  • Conducted market research scoping study that secured $10M in funding for the Africa Gender Innovation Lab, identifying cost-effective programs to close economic gender gaps.
Research Consultant
Feb 2023 – Jul 2023
Harvard Business School · Washington, DC
  • Updated HBS case on Mindspark, demonstrating that ROI and learning gains were driven by teachers' use of the technology, not just the software platform.
Research & Program Manager
Jul 2020 – Dec 2022
Precision Development · Washington, DC
  • Designed and executed an A/B test for a mobile advisory service that reduced message volume while increasing user engagement by 33%, significantly improving impact per dollar spent.
  • Facilitated due diligence and investment strategy for a climate-resilience tech fund serving 50,000 farmers, assessing scalability while mitigating execution risk.
  • Secured $3M+ in competitive funding to expand digital services across 7 countries; authored the strategic plan for a $150M USAID investment thesis on digital agriculture productivity.
  • Raised $1M in grant funding for a project to serve ~2M dairy farmers with innovative financial inclusion models for water tanks to build climate resilience.
  • Presented policy recommendations to USG leadership for a $150M digital agriculture investment targeting 100M farmers at Unlock Aid 2022.
Economist
Jul 2013 – Oct 2018
World Bank, Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region · Washington, DC
  • Managed and co-designed a $5M impact evaluation portfolio across East and West Africa, bridging major funders (USAID, ExxonMobil Foundation) with grassroots partners (CRS, TechnoServe) to align investment strategies and increase long-term program effectiveness.
  • Systems Improvement for Social Safety Nets: Partnered with Catholic Relief Services to evaluate a Nigerian graduation program; demonstrated that shifting to quarterly payments cut administrative burdens by 50% while maintaining full community impact, directly influencing $750M in subsequent funding designs.
  • Workforce & Fintech Social Return: Assessed training models in Ethiopia and Tanzania; found psychology-based mentoring and mobile savings drove 75% higher profits than traditional technical curricula.
  • Capacity Building: Built real-time impact infrastructure for partners including ACDI/VOCA and Promundo, enabling field teams to track performance data without administrative friction.
  • Collaborated with U.S. government partners and foundations to advocate for a $2B+ fund for women-owned small and medium enterprises.

Education

Master of Public Administration — Advanced Policy and Economic Analysis
Columbia University · New York, NY
B.A. in Economics
St. Xavier's College · Mumbai, India

Selected Publications

Business Training and Mentoring: Experimental Evidence from Women-Owned Microenterprises in Ethiopia
Economic Development and Cultural Change · 2022
With Mehrab Bakhtiar and Markus Goldstein.
Are Mobile Savings the Silver Bullet to Help Women Grow Their Businesses?
World Bank · 2018
With Iacopo Bianchi, Joao Montalvao and Markus Goldstein.
Gender-Transformative Bandebereho Couples' Intervention to Promote Male Engagement in Reproductive and Maternal Health and Violence Prevention in Rwanda
PLOS ONE · 2018
With Ruti Levtov, Kate Doyle, Vandana Sharma, and Gary Barker.
Are cash transfers better chunky or smooth? : evidence from an impact evaluation of a cash transfer program in northern Nigeria.
World Bank · 2017
With Sreelakshmi Papineni and Markus Goldstein.

View my full list of publications on Google Scholar →

Skills

Operations & Governance Strategic planning, process improvement, change management, organizational transitions, governance design, budget oversight, cross-functional leadership, stakeholder engagement, capital project oversight
Grant & Portfolio Grant strategy, grant pipeline development, grant management, portfolio management, funder relations, reporting & compliance, due diligence, impact assessment, cost-effectiveness
Research & Evaluation Performance monitoring, process evaluation, A/B testing, cost-benefit analysis, impact metrics, data-driven decision-making
Technical Tools Excel, Python, CRM, Notion, GIS, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, dashboards & reporting, AI-assisted research
Domains Operations excellence, process improvement, change management, organizational effectiveness, nonprofit management, government relations, network building
Languages English, Hindi, Marathi (all native)

Certifications

  • Project Management — Harvard Extension
  • Social Network Analysis — University of Michigan
  • Measuring Social Norms — The World Bank
  • Questionnaire Design — University of Michigan
  • Randomized Evaluation Training — MIT
  • Python — University of Michigan
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