Science Doesn’t Fail Without People. It Fails Without the Infrastructure to Reach Them.

Broader Impact Partners was founded in October 2025 by Leah Turner, Ph.D., to close a gap that shows up everywhere in mission-driven work: brilliant people doing exceptional research, building exceptional programs, running exceptional organizations, but without the structure, data, or stakeholder buy-in to make that work land.

Natural scientists are not always trained in social science. They don’t need to be, to do excellent research. But federal funding increasingly requires it: broader impact statements, community engagement plans, evidence of societal value. That requirement isn’t new bureaucracy. It’s a 50-year-old idea, formalized at the NSF in 1997, that public investment in science earns public benefit only when researchers build the bridge between data and the people that data is supposed to serve.

That bridge-building is Leah’s sweet spot. Over 15 years leading geoscience workforce initiatives, securing more than $800,000 in NSF-funded community-based research, and managing $1.7M+ in annual workforce development funding, she has made a career out of making good ideas legible to funders, to communities, and to the institutions that have to sustain them after the grant runs out.

Broader Impact Partners brings strategic clarity, organizational accountability, and partnership infrastructure to mission-driven organizations, so good ideas actually become funded, structured, sustained work.