Carol Pickering
Senior Partner
Carol works closely with Dietel & Partners’ clients to help develop grantmaking strategies and programs to match clients’ desired outcomes. Carol has had more than 14 years of experience working with individuals, multi-generational families, and family foundations. While she has worked across a breadth of issues, Carol is particularly knowledgeable about sustainable agriculture and food systems, fisheries, gun violence prevention, environmental justice, and photographic/moving image archives.
Carol helps individuals and families find the connections between their philanthropic goals and the organizations and initiatives that work in alignment with those interests. She’s a reliable resource in asking and answering tough questions concerning portfolio strategy, policy and advocacy, and funder collaborations.
Her early career as a business journalist fueled her investigative skills. She was a reporter at The Writing Company in Portland, Maine and later joined the editorial boards of Forbes ASAP and Business 2.0 magazines as a staff writer. Her interests led her to join a start-up food company in 2006, where she developed an interest in Maine’s value-added food industry. She helped start the Maine Food Producers Alliance, a non-profit business association for Maine’s food producers.
Carol is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and Holderness School. She is the Vice President of the Pickering Foundation in Salem, Massachusetts, an operating foundation dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of the Pickering House and family. She is a Steering Committee member of the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network. She is an alum of Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Art of Philanthropic Leaders Program.
She lives in Portland, Maine with her husband and two children, and is a proud member of the Sea Bags Women’s sailing team.