Wall Street to Nonprofit Resume

Question
I am a former Wall Street investment banker with an MBA from Northwestern who has been out of the traditional work force for 15 years. I left investment banking when my family relocated and I was pregnant with a third child. Since that point, I have volunteered extensively and have been president and vice president of several local not-for-profit boards. I truly utilized and broadened my skills during this period.

I am interested in pursuing positions in the not-for-profit/education area. The real meat of my experience is in investment banking, but that was a number of years ago. How should I organize my resume?

Answer
Definitely use a chronological resume format to highlight your work history. Like most chronological resumes, yours should list your work history in reverse chronology (most recent first) so that your experience with not-for-profits will be listed near the top of your Experience section. If you have spans of time when you were not volunteering, use "Full-time parent" as a job title to fill that gap.

Consider placing your Education section just under your Summary of Qualifications section. This will show off your MBA, which is relevant to nonprofit management.