Sarah Morton

Operations Consultant

Sarah Morton is an operations and organizational structure consultant. Her practice areas include organizational infrastructure and development, operational and transition planning, and working with teams in transition. She has specialized expertise in “spinning off” organizations from fiscal sponsors or umbrella organizations, including rapid development of operational infrastructure in HR, Finance, IT, and Facilities. Over the last two decades Sarah has worked with nonprofits of all sizes to create infrastructure and strategy that work.

Sarah has specialized experience serving organizations with a legal or direct service focus, and working with groups who are growing or in transition. She has specific experience growing organizations serving prisoners, refugees and displaced people, folks needing abortions, and the LGBTQ+ Community. Sarah also brings considerable experience with higher education to her work. Her experience in participating in negotiating union contracts from the management side also gives her a helpful perspective for unionized organizations.

Sarah also has international NGO experience and has managed operations in the Middle East and Europe.

Sarah has 20 years of nonprofit operations, admin, and leadership experience. Starting with paralegal work for the LGBTQ+ community and community work with an abortion fund, and moving to research, writing, and practice reforming the criminal legal system and higher education. Most recently Sarah was the Chief Operating Officer at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) where she spun off the organization from its fiscal sponsor, grew the operations team from scratch, opened new offices in Berlin, Germany and Washington, D.C., negotiated three union contracts, and managed international emergency response during the Covid pandemic, and during a period of violence and natural disasters in Lebanon.

Sarah led operations at IRAP for 7 years. Prior to that time she had a Berlin-based fellowship in Europe with a one year placement at the law faculty of the Free University (FU) Berlin. From 2009 through 2016, Sarah served as the Administrative Director of the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project at Harvard Law School, managing a hotline for incarcerated people and a 200-student activist community.

Sarah is committed to a practice of learning in community, and loves to work in teams and to get involved with the details in order to truly understand the work. She has volunteered with the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund, coached an adult all-gender softball team, and on the budget committee for her condo association. Sarah has a Master’s degree from the University of Sussex’s English Literature Program: Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change and a Bachelor’s Degree from Dartmouth College. She lives in New Hampshire and her hobbies include spending time in the snow with her niblings and reading queer literature.