Throughout her career, Maxwell School alumna Rain Henderson has worked to address pressing concerns related to public health, climate, education and social justice. She has served as a policy advisor to state and national government leaders and spearheaded domestic health measures as the chief executive officer of the Clinton Foundation’s Health Matters Initiative.

Now, Henderson is advising corporations and foundations through her own strategic consultancy, Elemental Advisors. Founding Elemental in 2017 was a natural entrepreneurial next step for Henderson, who earned a B.A. in international relations in 2000 followed by a master of public administration (M.P.A.) in 2001.

She lives in Westchester, New York, and travels around the country to work with a diverse list of clients such as AstraZeneca Foundation, Meta, Georgetown University and the American Heart Association.

Henderson draws on a wide network of experts with diverse backgrounds, building teams that meet on site to work with clients. Elemental’s role, she says, is “all about determining, how do you transition from your current state to a future state, with an emphasis on improving outcomes for a group of people?”

Henderson says instruction from top scholars and practitioners paired with unique experiential learning opportunities at Maxwell laid a solid foundation for her current work, which includes helping clients through transitions.

“The M.P.A., in particular, shaped my entrepreneurial mindset by grounding me in systems thinking, public accountability and cross-sector collaboration—all essential tools for creating value in complex environments,” she says. “Maxwell’s curriculum taught me how to assess and translate analysis to diverse stakeholders, to navigate ambiguity, to foster leadership from the ground up and top down, to identify leverage points, and to mobilize people and policy toward meaningful outcomes.”

Henderson was buoyed by the alignment of Maxwell’s ethos with her own. Throughout her varied roles, she has been steadfast in her dedication to give back and bolster others.

“I was raised to believe that public service is a necessity, and everybody has a duty to community,” she says. “My grandma Abbie was the beacon. She worked for the town government in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. She knew everybody who worked in public service and everybody who ran for office. Her living room was an unofficial campaign stop for local elected officials.”

Henderson set her sights on attending Syracuse University and got her start taking evening classes while working a full-time job as a manager for the bookstore. (The bookstore was also where she met her future husband, Nathan Whitney, a University student who, she says, “would come into the bookstore all the time and buy things he didn’t need so he could say hello.”)

Her first Maxwell advisor, former U.S. ambassador Goodwin Cooke, was a mentor. “As a student from a working-class background, I did not have access to many concepts in the world of international affairs and global economics,” she recalls. “He was very patient in helping me connect the dots between my coursework and the real world and my experience.”

Cooke helped Henderson secure a fellowship in London with the United Nations Association, which, along with an internship with Doctors Without Borders in New York City, inspired her to continue at Maxwell for an M.P.A.

“I really wanted to focus on nonprofit management, organizational development, analysis, budgeting and some of those other skills I thought were going to be critical regardless of what kind of organization I was part of—and that’s absolutely what I got out of it,” she says. “I still have many of the books, because the principles still apply to the work I do today.”