Leila Saad is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Lane, a firm dedicated to empowering CEOs, founders, and mission-driven leaders to successfully navigate rapid expansions and challenging market shifts. At Catalyst Lane, Leila provides expert guidance in resetting strategy, optimizing operations, cutting costs through expenditure review and resource allocation, and helping leaders and their teams adapt for peak performance by building robust organizational culture and resilience.

Prior to establishing Catalyst Lane, Leila served as the CEO of Common Impact, a national organization that designs and implements high-impact skills-based volunteering programs for Fortune 500 companies. In this role, she spearheaded the transformation of the $3.5 million company, reducing operational costs by 13% within nine months while driving a 12-point increase in NPS scores among top partners like JPMorgan Chase, NVIDIA, and Fidelity. She launched innovative new service lines, including global programs across the UK, Ireland, India, and Singapore. She also introduced an AI-powered sales solution, allowing the team to strategically focus on high-value accounts, and restructured pricing to increase per-project margins. The programs overseen by Leila provided critical pro bono expertise to diverse nonprofits, ranging from creating essential financial models and building tech solutions to running professional marketing campaigns, delivering tangible help that was otherwise inaccessible.

Leila's experience also includes a significant period at PILnet, a global organization providing pro bono legal support to nonprofits. She served as Executive Director / Chief Operating Officer, orchestrating a remarkable financial turnaround that surged cash reserves by 134% in just six months and renewed a major funding commitment from the Ford Foundation. Her strategic efforts in process optimization led to her team delivering 160% more in pro bono services (valued at $8M) within a single year. As Chief Operating Officer, she upgraded outdated CRM software and led the redesign of the website, boosting traffic by 224%. She began at PILnet as Director of Partnerships, where she rebuilt major client relationships with 24 premier global law firms.

Leila also dedicated many years as a nonprofit consultant, specializing in strategic planning, fundraising, and organizational development for global human rights and access to justice organizations. Her consulting engagements included helping the International Legal Foundation secure major funding to provide free legal counsel in Afghanistan, Nepal, and the West Bank and assisting the European Center for Human Rights with foundational documents for their launch. Earlier, at the JEHT Foundation, Leila helped design and run a grantmaking portfolio that supported around 70 organizations, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, in their efforts to challenge U.S. exceptionalism to international law and promote human rights.

Leila is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, where she studied international political economy, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she studied art history.