Team

As a Managing Director of the Foundation, Margo Drakos plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organizations as an operating partner and board member as they grow, build capacity, and realize their potential impact. Margo focuses on AI-enabled solutions that foster economic empowerment and agency. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she also helps to execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals and contributes to its thought leadership and external outreach. She currently serves on the board of DRK portfolio organizations Adalat AI, Darsel, Entryway, Karya, North Carolina Education Corps, and Rural Behavioral Health Institute. Margo previously served on the boards of DRK grantees, including Ameelio, Intelehealth, Rocket Learning, and Tarjimly.

As a tech entrepreneur, in 2007, Margo co-founded her first start-up, InstantEncore, the leading provider of web and mobile technology to the performing arts globally. In that role, she launched the first mobile apps with ticketing and live video and audio streaming from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House. Following, Margo spent a decade working with private and public sector institutions. During this time, Margo was Chief Technology Officer and Partner at McChrystal Group, a global advisory services firm.

In the national service space, Margo founded, led, and now serves as Board Chair of ArtistYear, a national AmeriCorps program. ArtistYear supports full-time Resident Teaching Artists serving in rural and urban school districts across eight states, to provide creative learning opportunities for nearly 40,000 low-income K-12 students each week.

Margo began working as a professional musician at age four, performing on national radio and television commercials. Over the course of her career as a cellist she performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician on the world’s preeminent stages on five continents. Margo entered music conservatory at fifteen as a double major in cello and composition and graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1999. Margo held positions as Principal Cellist of the Oregon, San Diego, and Seattle Symphonies, as Associate Principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and as the cellist of the American String Quartet. She served as Artist-in-Residence and faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Manhattan School of Music from 2002-2008. She recorded for Sony Classical and produced for Naxos.

Margo received a master’s in human rights from Columbia University and has completed executive degrees in global leadership and public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Margo was honored in 2010 as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Her publications have appeared in The Cornell International Law Journal, The International Affairs Review, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Margo is a Trustee of the Marlboro Music Festival and School and the National Humanities Center.