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 to build capacity and to achieve their maximum impact. 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 Ameelio, Citizen Data, Entryway, Intelehealth, North Carolina Education Corps, Rocket Learning and Tarjimly. Margo previously served on the boards of DRK grantee Public Rights Project.

Margo spent the past fifteen years as a founder of social enterprises, working with private and public sector institutions to leverage technology and to realize revenue potential, scale, and sustainability. She has recruited, led, and motivated matrixed and dispersed organizations of engineering, product, marketing, strategy, and growth teams. During this time, Margo was Chief Technology Officer and Partner at McChrystal Group, LLC, a global advisory services firm. Margo also founded and served as CEO of ArtistYear, the first National AmeriCorps program dedicated to the arts. In 2007, Margo co-founded and led her first start-up, InstantEncore, the world’s leading provider of web and mobile technology to the performing arts. In that role, she launched the first mobile applications and live web/mobile concert streaming and download events from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House.

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 Curtis Institute of Music in 1999. She served as Artist-in-Residence and faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Manhattan School of Music from 2002-2008. Margo’s positions included cellist of the American String Quartet, Principal Cellist of the Oregon, San Diego, and Seattle Symphonies, and Associate Principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony. She has recorded for Sony Classical and produced for Naxos.

Margo is an alum of the Young Global Leader program of the World Economic Forum. She is a frequent guest speaker at events including the Global Competitiveness Forum of Saudi Arabia, TechVenture in Singapore, and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Margo received a master’s in human rights from Columbia University. She has also completed executive degrees in global leadership and public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. Her publications have appeared in The Cornell International Law Journal, The International Affairs Review, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Margo serves as a Trustee of the Marlboro Music Festival & School and the National Humanities Center. She is a proud U.S. Military spouse and resides in North Carolina.