A Thoughtful Risk Taker

Meet the 2025 NACD Directorship 100^™ Nonprofit Director of the Year, Theresa Fay-Bustillos, and learn more about her unwavering commitment to morals and mission.

With a background as a civil rights lawyer, Theresa Fay-Bustillos is known by her colleagues for pushing the status quo and bringing “ethical clarity and legal rigor to the boardroom.” This is reflected in her board service at Benetech, a nonprofit that develops and provides technology solutions to empower learners with disabilities, according to Ayan Kishore, CEO of the company.

As vice chair, she constantly urges her fellow board members “to look at things differently, to spot what [they’re] missing, and to do better,” he said. This allows the board to uphold their fiduciary duties by reacting and responding to what stakeholders actually need “instead of just what sounds good” for the organization, Kishore wrote in his nomination of Fay-Bustillos for the NACD 2025 Nonprofit Director of the Year award.

Seeing Around Corners

Fay-Bustillos has served on the boards of 18 nonprofit organizations, including Benetech, Making Waves Education Foundation, and Fair Trade USA.

“When you serve on the board of a nonprofit, volunteering your time is the reward that you get,” Fay-Bustillos said. “You join boards that mean something to you. You join boards where you think you can make a difference.”

Her “unwavering commitment” to Benetech’s mission and her ability to focus on “what’s best for the organization and the people” it serves helped guide the company through a period of complex organizational change, wrote Richard Mueller, chair of Benetech’s board, in a nomination letter for Fay-Bustillos.

Under Fay-Bustillos’s guidance, the nonprofit transformed from a founder-led enterprise into an independent organization, overhauled its board charter, and established its first multiyear strategic plan. These efforts contributed to Benetech being named to Forbes’ inaugural Accessibility 100 list, which highlights the biggest innovators and impact-makers in the field of accessibility for people with disabilities, released in June 2025.

“Where others might have seen risk or disruption, Theresa saw an opportunity for growth, integrity, and alignment with [Benetech’s] mission,” Kishore wrote.

Fay-Bustillos’s belief in Benetech’s mission and care for the board’s performance is also reflected in her mentorship of the next generation of board leaders. She actively participates in “intentional coaching, succession planning, and peer support” and conducts offboarding interviews with departing directors to “reflect on their experiences and identify areas for growth,” according to Kishore. He believes this directly informed the board’s onboarding and meeting structure improvements.

In fact, Fay-Bustillos believes that one of the most important ways she can influence a board is by “making sure that I am both recruiting people that I think can bring different voices and perspectives and that I’m shaping a board that really appreciates all voices and values people that may not be experts in the field or think differently,” she said.

Leading with Conviction

Fay-Bustillos’s passion for philanthropy shone through in her work as executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation.

“When I was looking at the company, both at the foundation and at the corporation and global team, I realized that one of the big issues of an apparel company is conditions in factories,” Fay-Bustillos said. “This is something I actually knew a lot about because I did some of this work as a civil rights lawyer and my mother was a factory worker.”

Fay-Bustillos recognized that while apparel companies had an auditing function, the true factory conditions were sometimes hidden or obscured. As such, she established legal aid bureaus for factory workers in 16 countries where Levi’s sourced its products. Apparel factory workers from any brand could access these bureaus.

The first case the legal aid bureau handled involved a shoe factory where several workers were poisoned due to the owner not warning them about the glue they used. According to the doctor that helped treat them, the workers would have died from glue poisoning without the bureau. Fay-Bustillos believes her time with the foundation was “probably the most rewarding work in my career.”

Her colleagues believe this unwavering morality goes hand in hand with her approach to board service.

“Theresa doesn’t just talk about ethics, she lives them. She leads with quiet purpose, pushing the board to ask better questions and embrace disagreement when it serves the mission,” Kishore wrote. “With no ego, she stays focused on the people the organization serves, not appearance or comfort.” ■

This article is from the winter 2026 issue of Directorship.

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