Lerii has dedicated her 40-year career to helping nonprofit leaders advance community causes. She served the Texas Cooperative Extension Service, the American Heart Association, and the Fort Worth Chamber before launching Project Partners in 1995. Now through three decades of consulting for North Texas nonprofits, Lerii and her team deliver insights and expertise seldom found elsewhere.

Read More

When writing the business plan for Project Partners in 1994, Lerii’s vision was to provide a unique, hands-on consulting approach to increase nonprofit leaders’ capacity for success and community impact – a need she had witnessed many times across Fort Worth and Tarrant County during her years at the Chamber.

That vision came to life. Project Partners has since facilitated the work of more than 260 boards, committees, and task forces; helped raise awareness and tens of millions of dollars in donations, grants, and in-kind gifts; produced more than 1000 high profile events; engaged countless stakeholders around critical causes; and built scores of community programs, creating collective impact.

This has been accomplished while remaining dedicated to a work-life fit business model and the founding values of community, hard work, team efforts, excellence, relationships, and results.

Lerii, a Certified Fundraising Executive*, gives full credit to the entire Project Partners team for providing consistent results over 30 years to more than 160 organizations to date via 490 separate assignments, representing more than 75,000 hours of professional service to our community. And as true partners for good, she gives equal credit to the notable clients with whom the firm has had the privilege to work. The team remains grateful, and as Lerii is fond of saying, “It’s a good start!”

Lerii, a Distinguished Alumna of Texas Tech, and her husband of 38 years, Steve, have two grown children who were raised right alongside Project Partners and now pursue their own entrepreneurial endeavors. She volunteers for her church, the Fort Worth Chamber, and numerous other nonprofit and educational boards and committees.

*The CFRE, Certified Fundraising Executive, is a professional designation from the Association of Fundraising Professionals earned through experience, success, and tested knowledge. Lerii is one of only 5000 fundraisers world-wide to receive this designation.

Corinne Fiagome, M.P.P. brings 20 years of experience in fundraising, policy research and analysis, program design and evaluation, and communications to Project Partners’ clients. Prior to joining Project Partners, Corinne held increasing positions of leadership and responsibility at human service and education nonprofits in California, Oklahoma, and, finally, her native state of Texas.

Read More

Corinne has led grant writing, corporate engagement, and foundation relations for small, medium, and large nonprofits at different stages of the organizational life cycle and, in each case, managed consistent growth in corporate and foundation giving. Most recently, she oversaw all fundraising and communications functions for Child Care Associates – a $70M nonprofit providing early childhood education and comprehensive family services for low-income children in Tarrant County. Corinne’s selected career highlights include the following:

• Laid the infrastructure for a new fundraising and communications department at Child Care Associates (CCA) – a primarily government-funded organization – resulting in a 104% increase in current and prospective private donors and volunteers over an 18-month period and a 51% year-over-year increase in private contributions.
• Initiated, designed and directed CCA’s inaugural fundraising event and 50th anniversary celebration, which raised $135K in net revenue through corporate sponsorships, event ticket sales, and individual contributions.
• Resourced and coordinated a team of staff and board members at the YWCA Tulsa – a mid-size nonprofit – to completion of a $1.95M capital campaign within 18-months while also achieving a 9% average increase in grants and annual giving.
• Facilitated strategic planning, data collection, and policy analysis for countywide implementation of a federal initiative to reduce the over-representation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system in collaboration with justice system and community leaders in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, resulting in direct services for at-risk youth and training for law enforcement officers that contributed to a significant reduction in disproportionate arrests.

Through her professional and personal activities, Corinne lives out her passion and commitment to issues of education, equity, and economic well-being for vulnerable populations. She is an active alumna of Teach For America (Bay Area, 2000 Corps) and Leadership ISD – Tarrant County (2017 Fellowship), and a founding board member of Women in Power Empowering (a philanthropic giving circle of African-American women in DFW) and the Tulsa Children’s Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Within her professional and volunteer roles, Corinne frequently facilitates community conversations and stakeholder dialogues to help define pressing organizational and/or community needs, potential solutions, action plans, and evaluation timelines. She presented a case study on effective use of the Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Evaluation (SARA) Problem Solving Model at the 2010 National Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Conference hosted by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and will be offering SARA services to Project Partners’ clients.

Corinne earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce, specializing in management and marketing, from the University of Virginia and a Master of Public Policy degree, specializing in social policy, from Duke University. She was named to Oklahoma Magazine’s “40 under 40” list in 2008 and has received content writing awards from the Tulsa Press Club and Parenting Publications of America. In her free time, she loves reading, exploring, and spending time with her three children and husband.

Leighanne Christon, M.A., is a nonprofit management pro delivering 25 years of experience as a CEO, COO, Executive Director, Managing Director, Director of Finance and Administration, Development Director, and consultant for a variety of nonprofits and community initiatives in North Texas and beyond.

Read More

Passionate about serving as a change agent to assure sustainable community impact, Leighanne’s interest in advancing community causes began while volunteering in the Peace Corp in the Dominican Republic. She has since served the Non-Profit Finance Fund, Youth Speaks, Inc., Nature Preserve Foundation, Pathways Core Training, Center for Family Connections, Carroll Education Foundation, and Giving Grace, to name a few. In addition, her for-profit experience with Dun & Bradstreet, Price Waterhouse and a boutique consulting firm lends invaluable expertise to her work with the nonprofit executives and community leaders we are so privileged to serve.

A natural at developing and coaching staff and board leadership, crafting community programs, increasing earned revenue and philanthropic gifts, and managing operations, marketing, and events, Leighanne always puts people and relationships at the center of her mission-minded approach. Her fundraising success includes annual giving, major giving, grant writing, events, and campaigns for capital, endowment, and special projects. Recent career highlights include transforming an event-based education foundation into a relationship-based nonprofit raising more than $1,000,000 over a period of 18 months, merging two nonprofits for greater impact, and securing several multi-million-dollar grants.

Leighanne holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Illinois State University, a Master of Arts degree in Economics from University of Illinois, Springfield, and a Certificate of International Business from the University of the West of England. She is married and is the mother of five children (including a set of twins) ranging in age from middle school, high school, college, and grad school. When not working, Leighanne enjoys Pilates, walking, reading, volunteering in her community, and spending time with her busy family.

Wendy A. Williamson brings more than twenty-five years of experience in marketing and community relations, event management, volunteer engagement, fund development, administration and project management. Her work performance displays a conscientious, self-disciplined, and professionally-driven attitude.

Read More

Wendy’s cooperative style of work engages others and motivates them to collaborate. We especially depend on her ability to utilize creative design ideas in practical and efficient applications. Wendy is uniquely able to combine her highly organized technique of accomplishing critical tasks at hand with a “grace under pressure” style and terrific sense of humor.

Prior to joining the Project Partners team in 2001, Wendy held two different positions at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Wendy is a 1997 graduate of TCU with a Bachelor of Science degree in design and minors in art and business. She enjoys her two children, Ethan and Nina, cooking, volunteering for her children’s schools, and traveling.

Wendy’s Project Partners portfolio includes work for the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, the Arlington ISD Education Foundation, Safe City Commission, Sundance Square, Cook Children’s Medical Center, Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County, Fort Worth Academy, Fort Worth Sister Cities, Tarrant Independent School Consortium, Key School, Alliance for Children, Brighter Outlook, Inc., Child Study Center Foundation, First Command Educational Foundation, and "I Have a Dream" Foundation® Fort Worth.

Kristin Kirkpatrick comes to us from Texas Christian University, where she served as the Assistant Director of Conference Services for more than eight years. In that role, she coordinated more than 200 events annually, including huge high school graduations, community awareness and fundraising events, corporate meetings and conferences, and many TCU-hosted events.

Read More

Kristin developed strong ties with all of her clients including the Fort Worth ISD, Habitat for Humanity, YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth, Private School Interscholastic Association (PSIA), Tarrant County Literacy Coalition, Texas Diversity Council and the Child Study Center.

Kristin is a Texas girl and bleeds purple! She was born and raised in Mansfield and moved to Fort Worth to attend TCU. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in advertising before joining Conference Services. While working in Student Affairs, Kristin was able to do something she truly loves: build and engage community. It was that experience that cultivated her desire to become involved with the Fort Worth community and several nonprofit organizations.

Kristin is a 2014 Leadership Fort Worth Leading Edge graduate and has spent time working with Communities In Schools, the TCU Staff Assembly, TCU College Resource, TCU Brand Ambassadors and the Association of Event Directors-International (ACCED-I).

Also a creative writer, Kristin is currently working on a fiction novel. She and her husband, Jaycob, live in Aledo with their two daughters, Kelsey and Kimbrey.