Coffee & Conversation with Donaldson Fellow Jill Bauman ’87 MPPM

Please join 2026 Donaldson Fellow recipient Jill Bauman '87 for an intimate conversation on Thursday, September 17th from 2:00-2:45 pm. 

The Donaldson Fellows Program honors SOM alumni from all sectors and across the globe who share a dedication to solving complex problems and pursuing positive change in the world. It is the highest honor the school awards to alumni. 

Ms. Bauman is an impact-driven, seasoned entrepreneur and business executive. She is the founding CEO of the non-profit social enterprise Amplifi (formerly Imagine LA), home of the Benefit Navigator. Jill began her career in technology, then did a stint in investment banking, launched three for-profit companies, sold one, and then pivoted 20 years ago to become a social justice entrepreneur and more recently a “tech for good” creator.

Ms. Bauman has become an expert and trusted leader in family homelessness, poverty, benefits access, and human centered technology issues. She is a sought-after speaker and thought leader who is often asked to weigh in on panels and policy discussions.

Starting in 2006, focused on ending family homelessness and poverty, Jill led Imagine LA’s creation of the nationally recognized Family Partnership Model, an innovative and impactful whole family wellness and economic mobility model. Imagine LA’s economic mobility work highlighted the challenges and barriers service providers and households experience when trying to navigate the complicated web of public benefits and tax credits and find pathways out of poverty. This challenge currently leaves between $80-120 Billion annually in untapped critical benefits and tens of millions of families mired in generational poverty. In 2022, after robust research with USC Center for Social Innovation, the Benefit Navigator solution and Imagine LA’s pivot to become Amplifi emerged.

Amplifi is a social enterprise non-profit venture that co-designs tools to simplify the complex process of connecting people to needed and available resources.  The Amplifi team is a passionate team of social service experts and leading-edge technologists. Amplifi is the creator of the Benefit Navigator, an easy‑to‑use platform of digital tools that help case managers and their clients quickly and confidently identify and access federal, state, and local benefits, tax credits, and local resources. In addition, it provides unprecedented transparency to show changes to income affect benefit levels – revealing when “benefit cliffs” exist.

Designed for case workers by case workers and their clients, the Benefit Navigator saves time and headaches, as well as maximizes benefit take-up, recertification, and wage growth by providing trusted up-to-date information and tools (e.g., to confidently navigate new HR1 SNAP and Medicaid complexities) – helping social service providers address systemic barriers in public benefits access and economic mobility. It also tracks benefit identification, application, recertification, and awards as well as wage changes, providing unprecedented visibility and impact data for management use as well as for policy evaluation and systems change.

Amplifi’s sustainable business model utilizes philanthropy, leading-edge technology expertise (including Agentic AI and memory), and strategic partnerships to fuel the creation and piloting of its growing suite of benefit access tools. The Benefit Navigator was developed and piloted extensively in Los Angeles with generous funding from philanthropy led by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. To propel scale and sustainability, the Benefit Navigator is now expanding throughout California and nationally via low-cost Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model.

Jill resides with her husband John Bauman in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. Together they seek and enjoy the company of their two adult children, James and Isabelle, as well as family and friends along with great food, cultural experiences of every type, hiking, skiing, and competitive tennis. Jill earned a MPPM/MBA from the Yale School of Management and BA in Economics from Smith College. She recently served as Chair of the Yale SOM Alumni Advisory Board. Jill is also an advisor to the Livable Communities Initiative and the Ebell Women’s Club of Los Angeles.

PS. On the second night of the LA Wildfires, Amplifi was asked by philanthropy and the Mayor of Los Angeles if they could create a Disaster Navigator to help traumatized fire victims easily find and utilize the cascading lists of resource lists/links that were emerging.  Jill then led a 24/7 effort by Imagine LA and Better Angeles to create the LA Disaster Relief Navigator, which has now been recognized as an unprecedented tool for navigating the first 30-45 days of a major disaster. 
 

Jill Bauman LinkedIn