Asha Curran

Under Curran’s leadership, Giving Tuesday describes itself as an “inclusive and pluralistic community” that promotes giving in 105 nations. ⁵

Education and Early Life

Asha Curran grew up in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. Her father was a musician and her mother was a public-school teacher. ³ Curran graduated with a bachelor’s degree in politics from Mount Holyoke College in 1995. ⁶

Career

Upon graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1995, Asha Curran became a publicity worker for Kodansha. ⁶ From 2000 to 2002, she was a publicity manager for New York University.  ⁶

From 2003 to 2019, Curran, held various positions at 92^nd Street Y, including a program associate, director of lectures at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, director of special initiatives, director of the Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact, and the chief innovation officer and director of the Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact. During that period, she also spent a year as a non-resident fellow of the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society and, in 2017, became chair of the board of directors of TheGuardian.org, the fundraising arm of the Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian newspaper. As of November 2025, Curran remained the chair of the board of directors for TheGuardian.org. ⁶

As of November 2025, Curran was a visiting fellow at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford and a Marla and Barry Beck Visiting Social Innovator at the Social Innovation and Change Initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School. ⁶

Giving Tuesday

In 2019, Curran became the CEO of Giving Tuesday, a public philanthropy campaign that promotes charitable giving the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Giving Tuesday was founded at 92^nd Street Y in 2012 under Curran’s leadership in the 92^nd Street Y’s Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact. Giving Tuesday became independent from 92^nd Street Y in 2019. ^{6  1  2  4  3}

Under Curran, Giving Tuesday promoted $3.6 billion in donations to nonprofits on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in 2024, a 16 percent increase from the donations in 2023.  ⁴

Under Curran’s leadership, Giving Tuesday describes itself as an “inclusive and pluralistic community” that promotes giving in 105 nations. ⁵

As of November 2025, top supporters of Giving Tuesday included the Gates Foundation, AWS Nonprofits, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund, and Catalyst Fund. ⁷

Political Advocacy

In 2016, Asha Curran stated that she wanted to see women occupy 50 percent of leadership positions in the United States. ⁸

In 2021, Curran participated in an interview series with Authority Magazine on the steps she recommended taking to “create an inclusive, representative, and equitable society.” In her interview, she said that American society “has defended and invested in systems that allowed—and in many ways encouraged—injustice, racism, and misogyny.” She stated that America has allowed “inequities and human rights abuses” through “systems that are irrevocably broken.” ³

Awards and Nominations

Asha Curran received the 2015 Social Capital Hero Award, was named a Woman of Influence by New York Business Journal in 2015, and was named by Nonprofit Times on its Top Fifty Power and Influence List in 2019, 2020, and 2021. ^{1 9}

In 2025, Curran was named one of TIME’s most influential people in philanthropy, a list that included Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg, Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffet, and Mackenzie Scott. ¹⁰