Rooted in purpose.
Driven by impact.

Dr. Heather Sipsma has spent her career at the intersection of rigorous science and compassionate service. Trained as an epidemiologist at two of the country's most respected institutions — Johns Hopkins University and the Yale School of Public Health — she has devoted her work to understanding and improving health outcomes for those who are most vulnerable.

Her work began with fetal development research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she encountered a young girl – just 12 years old - attending the Hopkins hospital for fetal monitoring. This situation stayed with her, compelling her to care for young women choosing to care for their babies. That conviction shaped everything that followed — a body of research focused on maternal health, including adolescent pregnancy and parenting, breastfeeding equity, mental health, and health systems strengthening, always with an eye toward the communities that standard health recommendations too often leave behind.

For Heather, the drive to serve isn't separate from her faith — it flows directly from it. She sees her work as an expression of a deeply held Christian conviction: that caring for others, especially the most vulnerable, is both a moral calling and a practical discipline. Her faith shapes not only why she does this work, but how — with humility, rigor, and a genuine desire to see communities thrive.

Heather's experience extends well beyond the research lab. As a consultant at Analysis Group, she applied her analytical skills to complex questions across industries — learning to translate data into decisions for organizations of many kinds, not just those in public health.

In academia, she taught at the University of Illinois and Benedictine University, conducted research at the University of Chicago, and took on one of her most ambitious projects yet: building Gordon College's Master of Public Health program entirely from the ground up. From curriculum design to faculty development to accreditation groundwork, she created something from nothing — a skill that translates directly to the work of helping organizations build systems, processes, and capacity where little existed before.

Through all of it, she recognized a persistent gap: mission-driven nonprofits and healthcare organizations were doing vital work, but often lacked the technical capacity to measure it, communicate it or sustain it. Elevating Impact was founded to fill that gap.

She brings to every engagement the same qualities that have defined her career across research, consulting, and program-building: intellectual rigor, evidence-based thinking, and a genuine belief that good data — in any context — can change lives.