About Us

Culture Beyond Compliance combines the energy of three powerhouse consultants who use their respective expertise in fundraising and training to create an innovative and custom program to confront your organization’s toughest challenges.

Karen Eller, co-founder

Karen’s 20-year career in fundraising has touched virtually every aspect of philanthropy.

She spent 11 years with The Nature Conservancy, first opening and managing the first Nature Conservancy philanthropy office in Austin, TX, and then transitioned to the California Chapter where she oversaw individual major donor giving from Silicon Valley to Monterey. In California, she also served as a founding partner of the Northern Sierra Partnership, an innovative, alliance-based organization developed to ensure the landscape-scale protection of the northern Sierra Nevada and associated watershed.

Karen transitioned to private consulting in 2010, building the first fundraising program for FoodCorps, a national AmeriCorps service program, and serving on the start-up team for the Denver-based Impact Finance Center, which seeks to align donor and investor capital with their philanthropic values. Karen works with large and small nonprofits, developing long- and short-term strategic plans, coaching staff and boards, creating infrastructure and policies, facilitating trainings to maximize board potential, and providing capital campaign and impact investing counsel. Other clients include Conservation International, Food and Environment Reporting Network, Fair Food Network, and Slow Food U.S.A. She is a Property and Environmental Research Center Enviropreneur Institute fellow, and graduated from Trinity University with a BA in English and Minors in Environmental Studies and Geology.

Kelly C. Weiley, co-founder

Kelly’s boundless energy and passionate leadership style has led to a career that spans industry sectors and 18 years of working with individuals of all ages and from diverse backgrounds. She has trained over 25,000 people on topics ranging from creating social change, diversity and inclusion, intercultural competency, navigating difficult conversations, situational leadership, and effective facilitation. By making topics active and relevant to participants’ daily lives, she invites each person to share, contemplate, discuss, and become an integral part of the experience while feeling safe and supported.

Kelly currently serves on the National Advisory Board for Equity in the Center, an initiative that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems within the social sector to increase racial equity. She also serves as Adjunct Faculty for Northwestern University in the School of Education and Social Policy. Kelly holds a Master of Science degree in Social Responsibility from St. Cloud State University where she has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in Human Relations and Multicultural Education.

Previously, Kelly taught at the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas. She also facilitated award-winning residential service-learning experiences for high school students and staff at the Civic Education Project (CEP), and partnered with six Boston public schools and a career center to connect struggling young people to employment opportunities through the Year 13 program. Kelly draws upon her classroom experiences to root her trainings in research and theory, but always circles back to how principles apply to individuals, urging them to practice skills that improve performance, foster growth, and nurture effective leaders.

Kourtney Cockrell

Kourtney Cockrell is a Black and Jewish cis woman and the Founding Director of Student Enrichment Services at Northwestern University, an office that works with students coming from first-generation, lower-income, and/or undocumented backgrounds. Kourtney has spent 20 years working with organizations to increase access and opportunity for marginalized students and young professionals across higher education and the nonprofit and private sectors.

Kourtney recently co-founded the FGLI Consortium, a national organization, providing leadership, expertise, and resources around the experience of first-generation and/or lower-income college students at highly selective universities and colleges. Kourtney is a faculty member in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and has also provided consulting services with Johns Hopkins University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Prior to working with Student Enrichment Services, Kourtney worked with The Posse Foundation as the National Director of Career and Alumni Programs, served as an Admissions Officer with the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and acted as National Diversity Recruiting Manager with McMaster-Carr.

Kourtney has expertise in college access, social justice education, organizational change, nonprofit management, and talent management. Kourtney earned her BA in African-American Studies and Sociology at the University of Michigan and her MS in Learning and Organizational Change from the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern.