Lydia Guterman
Managing Director, Head of Client Service and Operations, Advisory Services
Lydia Guterman is the head of Client Service and Operations for the firm’s Advisory team, which works with institutional, corporate, family, and individual clients to design, implement, assess, and learn from effective, equity-focused philanthropic initiatives. This includes grant making as well as efforts that go beyond grant making to achieve our clients’ philanthropic goals, such as impact investing, programmatic strategy, advocacy advising, evaluation and learning, donor collaboration, and organization design and launch services. Arabella’s Advisory practice welcomes the opportunity to work with clients at all stages of their philanthropic journey.
At Arabella, Lydia has led a range of strategy, grant-making, and donor collaboration projects for a variety of clients, helping them achieve impact in early education, affordable housing, and health and human rights. Prior to joining Arabella, Lydia worked at The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Open Society Foundations, where she developed and implemented global and domestic grant-making and advocacy strategies to increase access to quality health care for underserved populations. In these roles, she managed capacity-building initiatives for emerging nonprofit organizations and oversaw funding for innovative training programs for health professionals. At the Open Society Foundations, Lydia led the Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care, a multi-year global effort to end severe rights abuses against marginalized populations in health settings. Her other professional experience includes conducting research and strategy reviews for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and the Treatment Action Group and overseeing evaluation for a women-focused business development organization.
Lydia holds a BA in journalism and social and economic justice from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an MPH from the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.