Noah Elbot ’09

Connecting Communities

Noah Elbot ’09 finds sustainable approaches to complex issues.

BY LARRY CLOW

Kindness has taken Noah Elbot ’09 to some unexpected places. He’s traveled around the world as a project manager with Dalberg Advisors, a global group that champions inclusive and sustainable solutions to complex social and environmental challenges. He’s also camped out on the floor of the Grand Canyon as a co-founder of a remote learning startup during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though the scenery may change, Elbot’s guiding principles remain the same. “As someone who’s spent a good portion of my life living in other countries where I don’t necessarily share a lot in common with people, kindness is helpful. It’s something that’s universally recognized,” he says.

It’s an attitude that Elbot developed early in life, thanks in part to his years at St. Paul’s. “Interacting with my formmates and dorm neighbors from different countries and different backgrounds was a great influence,” he says.

Elbot began studying Chinese at St. Paul’s and completed a five-week language and culture intensive program at Beijing Normal University. He studied economics and East Asian studies at Brown and in 2016 was among the inaugural recipients of the Schwarzman Scholarship, a master’s degree program based on the Rhodes Scholarship that brings students to study leadership and global affairs at China’s Tsinghua University.

“Ever since St. Paul’s, I’ve worked at mission-driven organizations,” he says. “I knew that I wanted to work on international issues, and issues of equity, justice and sustainability, and Dalberg was a great opportunity to work at both global and local scales.”

He joined Dalberg in 2018, where he focuses on strategy for social impact projects. That could mean anything from helping the U.S. government to work with impact investors on renewable energy projects in the Caucasus to advising the Gates Foundation on how to shift power to community-led initiatives in the U.S. on issues of equity and justice.

“If someone wants to do something complex or interesting or new, we work with foundations and nonprofits and governments to help create a plan,” he says. “We aren’t the experts, but we have the time and networks to connect the stakeholders.” Elbot likens his work to being a translator: Taking what he’s learned from experts or community members and turning that information into value propositions for investors or designs for a new initiative.

Elbot says no matter how big a problem — and its accompanying solution — may be, individual people should be the focus. He points to his recent work at Dalberg with the Urban Institute on connecting community and national organizations that are tackling the many dimensions of poverty. While lots of groups, large and small, are dedicated to individual issues — criminal justice reform, access to housing, etc. — those groups aren’t always able to coordinate their efforts, particularly small community-based organizations trying to engage with state and national initiatives. There’s a similar disconnect between large foundations and the programs they help fund.

“The people doing this work know how intersected and interdependent it is, but there aren’t many ways for them to talk. This project looked at how we can make sure the silos come down and everyone’s working on shared goals set by the communities they are serving, and doing so in an equitable way,” he says. “It’s an effort to flip the top-down way philanthropy has traditionally worked.”

Flipping traditional experiences comes naturally to Elbot. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he took a leave from Dalberg to help launch A Place Beyond (APB), an education start-up that created residential experiences for college students at summer camps. With most college campuses closed and students stuck learning remotely at home, Elbot and his co-founders found a way to build community and create unique education experiences from inside small pandemic bubbles in nature.

Students came from a variety of backgrounds, with some never having been on a camping trip before. Though far away from the global scope of his usual work, Elbot tapped into the same values — relying on empathy, not sympathy, to relate to people, and understanding where people are coming from.

“Our team was made up of educators from wilderness expedition organizations like NOLS and Outward Bound. We’d take the APB participants camping, hiking and rock climbing in national parks,” he says. “Building a new type of campus community was a wonderful and complex way to spend the pandemic. It was very much shaped by my time at St. Paul’s, and wanting to replicate the best parts of the residential campus experience.”