The Ops Collective Story
We’re an all women consulting team who co-founded The Ops Collective so we could lead with our values, raise standards across industries, and challenge traditional approaches to how people structure their organizations. We have experienced a gap between the way workplaces set up their systems and the impact they were aiming to make. Our goal is to help our clients bridge that gap to live their values at home in their own organization, so they are better able to fully realize their values and mission externally.
It brings us joy to see social justice organizations succeed. Enough damage has been done by organizations that place money and output above people. When we join your team, whether for 4 weeks or 12 months, we’ll do everything we can to set you up for success. Together, we’ll tend to the soil so we can sow seeds of change until fairer, more sustainable operations become the norm.
Meet The Team
Aditi Naik
Aditi Naik
She/her. Libra.
Aditi is originally from India, but was raised in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand. She found her way to Saint Paul, MN, for college, where she had never seen snow, and then made her way to Brooklyn, NY for over 12 years, before making a new home in San Francisco. Aditi is a people person; she thrives on relationship building, stakeholder management, and forging connections to truly understand how to support organizational best practices. The past few years have demonstrated that these relationships matter, and that a workplace can only be successful if employees are happy, supported, and are able to thrive.
Prior to The Ops Collective, Aditi spent the last 14 years working in philanthropy, providing operational capacity to nonprofit initiatives. While Aditi has experience across all nonprofit operation functions - finances, setting up systems and processes, compliance management, etc - her expertise is in managing people. Previously, Aditi has:
Supported The Asian American Foundation as their Interim COO, setting up all operational structures and building internal capacity for their team;
Been the Director of Talent and Culture for Supermajority Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) and Supermajority, a 501(c)(4);
Served as a Director at Arabella Advisors, providing launch and operational support to dozens of nonprofit and philanthropic projects.
Outside of work, Aditi enjoys traveling, reading romance novels, eating pizza, watching reality TV, and spending time with friends and family.
Kara Federico
Kara Federico
She/her. Virgo.
Kara currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, but she has spent her life moving every few years. Her love for travel and visiting loved ones means she often finds her in a different city or state every other week. She is an operations nerd who is obsessed with making sense of things, bringing order to chaos, solving problems, and LOVES planning. After only a few years of working in corporate culture, she realized that there has to be a better way to work, and believes in our collective ability to re-shape our work life futures that honors everyone’s truest self, and moves us towards collective liberation. She believes deeply that creating strong, worker-centered operational functions are what allow organizations, and the people within them, to reach their greatest potential.
Prior to co-founding The Ops Collective, Kara spent the past seven years providing operational support to both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Previously, Kara has:
Established organizational infrastructure as Fund Director for The Solidarity Fund by Coworker, an independent 501(c)(4)
Supported the development of operations policies and policies as the Director of Operations at Coworker, a fiscally sponsored 501(c)(3)
Helped build client service capacity and developed systems, structures, and best practices for the fiscal sponsor team as the Associate Director of Client Service at Arabella Advisors
Outside of work, Kara enjoys quality time with her loved ones, communing with nature, discussing and dissecting pop-culture, and eating all the food.
Collaborators with the Ops Collective
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Bernadette Cruz
She/Her. Sagitarius.
Bernadette Cruz has over 15 years in nonprofit operations and event management, supporting a number of organizations in their growth and development. Most recently, Bernadette was the Director of Operations for The Asian American Foundation, where she helped project manage the organization in their spin out from their fiscal sponsor into an independent entity, as well as directed a wide range of operational initiatives at the foundation. Bernadette was formerly the Deputy Director of Operations at Supermajority, a 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), and PAC, where she managed vendor relations, contracting and invoicing processes, and oversaw effective procedures for the organization. She supported all organizational functions including financial reporting, tracking, budgeting as well as HR and new hire onboarding.
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Allyson Winburn
She/Her. Taurus.
Allyson Winburn is a full-spectrum doula and operations expert based in DC with 7 years of experience supporting fiscally sponsored projects. She enjoys bringing sense to chaos in all of her work - both for new and expectant parents and for complex and evolving organizations. Prior to starting her work in philanthropy, Allyson served in the Peace Corps in South Africa and graduated from the University of Maryland. Outside of work, Allyson can either be found enjoying the outdoors with her dog, Nina, or enjoying the view of her TV from the couch with her cat, Ruby.