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Jennifer Fortner

  • Retired Managing Director
  • Goldman Sachs & Co.

Jenny served as Director of Impact and Engagement for the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund (GSPF).  In this role, she helped advisors and clients develop their charitable efforts and amplify their impact in the community.

Prior to this role, Jenny was an investment advisor at Goldman Sachs for more than 20 years, advising high net worth families and foundations. She co-founded and is former co-head of the Goldman Sachs (GS) Chicago Women's Network and the GS Chicago Diversity Network. Jenny also co-founded the WRAP Program (Women Reaching Accelerated Potential) and is past board chair of the GS Client Engagement Team. She joined Goldman Sachs as a financial analyst in 1998 and was named managing director in 2011. 

In the community, Jenny is a board member of DePaul University, the Misericordia Foundation, and she is an investment committee member and board member of the Big Shoulders Fund, serving Catholic Schools in Chicago.  Jenny is an executive committee member and finance committee member of Special Olympics International, serving five million athletes with intellectual disabilities globally. She also served on the executive committee and is the past board chair of Special Olympics Illinois.  Jenny was a co-chair of the Special Olympics 50th Anniversary, raising $10 million and convening 10,000 people for the first-ever Global Day of Inclusion at Soldier Field in Chicago.  Jenny is a past member of the Visiting Committee for the University of Chicago and a past fellow (2016) of Leadership Greater Chicago. She won the "Volunteer of the Year Award" for Special Olympics in 2018, and "Alumna of the Year Award" in 2015 for implementing a pilot program teaching financial literacy at her alma mater, Mother McAuley High School, where she was recently inducted into their Hall of Honor.  In 2008, Jenny won the Highest Leaf Award for leadership from the Women's Venture Fund.

Jenny earned a BA in Psychology with Phi Beta Kappa honors from The University of Chicago, where she was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame for competing on the women's varsity basketball team. She is married, and together, Jenny and her husband, P.Jay, are raising three children in the South Suburbs of Chicago, where Jenny loves coaching basketball for her local Catholic Grade School and for the Windy City Elite Travel girls team.

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