Cate Costa

Cate Costa is the Founding Principal of GSImpact, a consulting practice that helps foundations, corporate philanthropies, and business support organizations build measurement frameworks and theories of change that are coherent, honest, and aligned with what they are actually trying to accomplish.

For two decades, Cate has worked at the intersection of entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and economic development — designing programs, deploying capital, and asking hard questions about what actually moves the needle for the entrepreneurs and communities these investments are meant to serve.

As Vice President of Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase, she designed the firm's $350 million small business commitment, deploying nearly $100 million in philanthropic capital across 37 countries and supporting more than 200,000 entrepreneurs per year. She built blended finance structures, modernized grant governance, and co-created field-wide initiatives at scale.

Before JPMorgan Chase, Cate led Illinois' $600 million supplier diversity program — managing a 19-person team across 65 state agencies and driving a 23% increase in contract value to diverse-owned businesses. Earlier in her career, she directed entrepreneurship programming at the Chicago Urban League, where she redesigned curriculum and turned a budget deficit into a surplus.

What she observed across all of those roles — and what she is now studying formally — is that the metrics the entrepreneurship support field uses to evaluate success are fundamentally misaligned with its stated goals. That misalignment isn't just a data problem. It shapes what programs get designed, what organizations get funded, and ultimately whether entrepreneurs are better off.

Cate is a Global Executive PhD candidate at ESCP Business School in Paris, where her doctoral research examines metric misalignment in philanthropic support for entrepreneurship. She is a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute and Vice Chair of the Board of Founders First Community Development Corporation. She holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, an M.B.A. from Howard University School of Business, and completed executive education at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She was named to Crain's Chicago's 40 Under 40 in 2021 and to the Porsche Power 30 Under 30 in 2017. She has been appointed to the Illinois Business Enterprise Program Council by the Governor of Illinois and to the Chicago Task Force on Removing Barriers to Employment and Entrepreneurship by the Mayor of Chicago. She is a lifetime member of Prospanica (formerly the National Society of Hispanic MBAs).