Successful Project Management

Nelson Layag is the training director for CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. Nelson’s current responsibilities include the design and management of CompassPoint’s leadership and management workshops, networks, and conferences; strategy and implementation of organizational communications and marketing; and design and delivery of training focused on people/performance management and project management.   Some of Nelson’s recent work and projects includes:

• Co-author and curriculum designer for Supervision: Helping People Succeed Part 1 and 2
• East Bay Nonprofit Forum Program Design and Implementation: Writing Your Organization’s Next Chapter: Strategic Actions for Organizational Impact 
• Performance Management 101: Achieve Results with Your Team, presentation at the Bank of America Neighborhood Excellence Initiative, emerging leaders convening
• Board Basics Online – Curriculum design and development of online course for potential board members (www.compasspoint.org/boardbasics)
• Mission Neighborhood Health Clinics – Three part supervision training and facilitation

Nelson’s passion is working with staff and leaders of social change organizations that serve under-represented communities. He understands and enjoys seeing the power a group of individuals can have when they find a way to work effectively together.  He brings this excitement to his work in performance management, project management and developing a training program that meets the needs of people working in the nonprofit sector.

In his 16 years at CompassPoint, Nelson has held numerous posts including Director of Technology and Director of Education.  During his time as Director of Education, he led the nation’s largest nonprofit training program with 500 workshops and 6 major conferences.  In 1997, Nelson was instrumental in developing the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network  (YNPN) in San Francisco.  YNPN has since grown into a national movement to support emerging leaders in the nonprofit sector.  He currently sits on the board of the Alameda Education Foundation and on the steering committee of the nonprofit online magazine, BlueAvocado.

Prior to joining CompassPoint, Nelson was the Accounting Operations Coordinator at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco and Group Home Supervisor for Star House in San Jose. He was a social worker serving at risk youth in Baltimore before coming to California. Nelson has a BA in Business Administration and Marketing from Loyola College in Baltimore, MD and was part of a group of students that helped lead the development of the Center for Values and Service at Loyola. 

Nelson currently lives with his wife and three kids in the San Francisco Bay Area where he spends much of his spare time coaching youth sports and trying to keep up with school projects, field trips, and homework.  Somehow he finds just in enough time to play drums in a “dad garage band.” Email Nelson.

Workshops