Our Leadership

Al Mueller

Founder/CEO, Excellence in Giving LLC & Co-Founder, EIG Insights

Mr. Mueller founded Excellence in Giving in 2001 after 20 years of providing investment advice to major institutions and wealthy families. During his career at Morgan Stanley and UBS, Mr. Mueller evaluated investments in virtually every asset class. His clients relied on his ability to evaluate risk and reward of the investments in their portfolio.

Mr. Mueller used his investment background to launch excellence in Giving with a desire to help clients achieve high-performing philanthropic portfolios. The world-class team that Mr. Mueller assembled has been acknowledged as the premier provider of advice for values-based giving.

Since 2001, Mr. Mueller and his team have advised their retained clients on over $800 million of charitable gifts. The Excellence in Giving clients give with great confidence and are able to celebrate the results of their gifts. Al’s proven service and advice to families makes him one of the most respected and sought-after thought leaders in philanthropy today.

Mr. Mueller played football at Brown University, graduated from the University of Arizona, and holds an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He and his wife, Susan, have three adult children and five adorable grandchildren. Al and Susan appreciate the challenging game of golf, mountain adventures, and ski slopes that the Rocky Mountains provide.  

Kristen Check

Vice President, EIG Insights

Kristen brings over 10 years of experience in the international development non-profit sector including designing and supporting monitoring & evaluation for multi-million-dollar development projects funded by World Bank, UNICEF, Pentair Foundation, among others; executing training programs, hosting webinars and podcasts, facilitating community networks, and advising numerous organizations on their monitoring & evaluation strategies in order to help clients ‘measure what matters’ so that they fulfill their mission and vision.

After a number of years working in the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector as an evaluation specialist, Kristen realized there was a need for skilled monitoring & evaluation professionals who could serve a wide variety of organizations and who also understood the importance of spirituality and faith in poverty alleviation. It was then that she founded her own boutique consulting firm, Edessa Research.

While operating Edessa, Kristen also led the Qualitative Research team at Compassion International, and has been pivotal in building Compassion’s capacity for qualitative research, knowledge management, and utilization of feedback data and constituent voice in program strategy.

Kristen has carried out monitoring, evaluation, and research work in a number of different countries across multiple sectors. To date she has worked with organizations providing safe water in Honduras, educating children and youth in Tanzania, rescuing victims of human trafficking in India, and sharing the gospel in South Sudan, to name a few.  

Kristen holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Cultural Anthropology, and a Graduate Certificate in Public Health from the London School of Tropical Medicine.

Kristen resides on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, USVI with her husband and two sons. She enjoys any activity in and on the water.

Kate Williams-Whitley

President & CEO, EIG Insights

Prior to joining Excellence in Giving, Kate Williams-Whitley has been instrumental in building Compassion International’s MERL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning) division over the past decade most recently as Vice President. Throughout her tenure at Compassion International, Kate has been integral in growing their MERL team from a team of 4 staff with lateral connection and a $500k budget to a team of over 100 with a budget of over $10M. Prior to her work with Compassion International, Kate served as a Thesis Advisor for the University of San Francisco, a Global Fellow for USAID, Content leader for Kiva.org, and Researcher for World Relief and TechSoup to name a few. She has also taught many leaders in nonprofit organizations through her tenure as an adjunct professor of the MBA and MA International Development programs at Eastern University; as well as been influential in the creation of Accord’s research network.

Kate holds Graduate Certificate in Data Science from Harvard University, Executive Education Training in Impact Evaluations from MIT, Masters of International and Development Economics from University of San Francisco, and a BA in Non-Profit Management from the University of Pittsburgh.

Kate has traveled and worked in over 40 countries and enjoys the arts. Residing in Charlotte, NC, she enjoys the arts and shares her life with her husband and two sons.

Our Team