Ayesha Khanna is the president of the Civic Incubator, which incubates and nurtures emerging civic ventures.
Ayesha has a record of success in developing and executing the strategic repositioning of corporate and nonprofit organizations. Prior to her role with the Civic Incubator, she served as the finance director for Borders For Atlanta and helped raise more than $1.3 million dollars to run a competitive mayoral campaign. She also worked as an independent consultant for a variety of private and public initiatives. She led planning, capacity building, fundraising and grassroots organizing for Women for Change, launching and leading the Women for Obama Atlanta Committee, which engaged more than 20,000 individuals across the region.
Additional positions Ayesha has held include chief operating officer of United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta with oversight of a $109 million budget and 240 staff across 13 counties, CEO of YWCA of Greater Atlanta and senior manager with Strategic Services at Andersen Consulting LLP (Accenture), where her clients included AT&T, RJR Nabisco, Holiday Inn Worldwide, Duke Power Company, Coca-Cola Foods, JPMorgan Chase, Xerox, W.R. Grace, Mobil Oil Corporation and Kraft General Foods.
Ayesha has also served as an organization development consultant for the New York City Public School System, a research associate for the National Institute for Dispute Resolution and an educational consultant for the Spastics Society of Northern India in New Delhi, India.
She was appointed by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin as vice president of Fort McPherson Planning Local Redevelopment Authority. Ayesha has served on the boards of directors for the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, Moore Financial Women’s Advisory Council, Research Atlanta, Hands On Atlanta, National Association of YWCA Executives and United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta.
She was appointed by Governor Roy Barnes to the Georgia Commission on Women. Ayesha served on the United Way Diversity and the Youth Leadership Councils and was a member of the Georgia Executive Women’s Network. Ayesha graduated from the United Way VIP Leadership Training Program in 1998 and was a 2001 graduate of Leadership Atlanta and a 2000 graduate of Leadership Georgia. She was also named a 1999 Outstanding Atlantan. Ayesha received a scholarship to attend the Harvard Business School Strategic NonProfit Management Program.
Ayesha earned a master of arts in organizational psychology with specializations in organizational change and consultation from Columbia University and a bachelor of arts in psychology and English from Franklin and Marshall College.