NEW YORK, NY – Markle Foundation CEO and President Zoë Baird today announced the appointment of Robert Khedouri as Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer and Wan-Lae Cheng as Senior Director. Both will build on an already diverse and talented team committed to furthering Markle’s mission to improve the economic security, health, and national security of all Americans.
Currently, Markle is engaged in a nationwide effort to advance transformative strategies that create paths for good and meaningful work for all Americans in the digital age. Rework America, the Markle Economic Future Initiative, is a group of more than 50 leaders from across America focused on driving innovations in business, education, and training to ensure all Americans have a meaningful place in the new economy.
“Robert and Wan-Lae are important appointments for Markle as they bring extensive experience and add the necessary leadership and depth that will help us drive Rework America,” said Zoë Baird, CEO and president of the Markle Foundation. “Their strength in building teams and developing comprehensive strategies across sectors will be instrumental as our initiative moves forward.”
“Markle recognizes that America is in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in over a hundred years,” said Robert Khedouri. “Through Rework America, Markle has a vision for making opportunity available for everyone. I very much look forward to working with Markle’s talented team and helping to lead this important national initiative.”
“As someone who strongly believes in the promise of the American Dream, I am honored to join Markle,” said Wan-Lae Cheng. “Markle is an innovative, forward-thinking organization with the ability to impact the lives of millions of Americans. I look forward working closely with our partners to make the Initiative’s vision a reality.”
About Robert Khedouri
Most recently, Robert Khedouri was Co-Founder and Director at PeerIQ, a financial information services company in the peer-to-peer loan space. He was previously Co-Founder and Co-CEO of MusicGremlin, a venture-backed startup that pioneered the delivery of digital media content direct to wireless devices. Following the sale of MusicGremlin to SanDisk in 2008, Robert held senior executive positions at SanDisk for several years, most recently as GM of the Software & Solutions Division.
Earlier in his career, Robert was a corporate attorney with Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represented banks and issuers in a variety of public and private debt and equity issuances, mergers & acquisitions and other corporate matters, and also a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where his clients included a variety of technology companies, financial institutions and media companies. Robert holds a B.S.E. with concentrations in finance and real estate from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania law school.
About Wan-Lae Cheng
Wan-Lae served as Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company since 2008 where her experience crossed the public, private, and social sectors. Wan-Lae focused on strategy, organizational transformations, and innovation with non-profit higher education systems, foundations, and private sector companies in the education space. She also led McKinsey’s research on student attitudes as it relates to college completion and worked on topics related to Common Core assessments and implementation.
Prior to McKinsey, Wan-Lae worked for MDRC in Oakland, CA, a public policy firm specializing in large-scale randomized control trials, where she led site selection, pilot design, and data collection for federal studies on employment retention and advancement for the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Wan-Lae holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in Foreign Affairs, and an MBA from the Columbia Business School.
For more visit https://www.markle.org and http://www.ReworkAmerica.org
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About Markle
Markle works to realize the potential of information technology to address previously intractable public problems for the economic security, health, and national security of all Americans. Markle’s current initiative is focused on accelerating innovations that use the forces of technology and globalization to return opportunities to Americans in today’s rapidly changing networked economy. For more information, visit markle.org and follow us on Twitter @MarkleFdn.
Rework America
Rework America, an initiative of the Markle Foundation, is a partnership focused on driving solutions to the changes brought by today’s networked world. Rework America’s 60 members are leaders from across the political spectrum, working in the business, education, government and nonprofit sectors to identify and develop new ways for Americans to grow their businesses, create new jobs, and develop the skills they need to participate in this new economy. For more information, visit ReworkAmerica.org and follow us on Twitter @ReworkAmerica.
