Foundations
The New York-based Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s policy shift to focus on strengthening urban youth service agencies in the Northeast has resulted in another spin-off of a program and its staff. Clark’s Child Welfare Program is now being managed by the D.C.-based Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), through a farewell grant of $11.2 million over 39 months. Moving to CSSP is Susan Notkin, director of Clark’s Program for Children. She opened CSSP’s New York office in January.
Notkin has overseen Clark’s “Keeping Children Safe Is Everybody’s Business” program for 10 years. Notkin is taking two Clark assistants, Myra Rosenbaum and Alicia Lizama, to staff CSSP’s new Center for Partnership in Children Welfare. The CSSP is run by Frank Farrow – that is, when he is not busy as the director of Technical Assistance Resource Center at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore.
Two new portfolio managers have joined Clark to handle grant-monitoring and technical assistance for those youth service agencies selected for the foundation’s capacity-building grants: Woodrow McCutchen, who spent six years in D.C. with the Boys & Girls Club and the city recreation department, and five years as executive director of the Salvation Army Boys Club & Neighborhood Center in Richmond, Va. (in which, he proudly notes, he was an active member as a child); and Richard Stewart, who has worked for the Ford Motor Co. and most recently for accounting firm giant Deloitte & Touche. Preethi Edara and associate Susan Lee were added as portfolio assistants to the Youth Development Fund team.
Clark will get help vetting agencies from the Bridgespan Group Advisors (BGA), a Boston nonprofit spin-off of Bain & Co. with a budget of $4 million to $5 million. The 50-person staff is led by Jeffrey Bradach. The 2-year-old BGA works, says Bradach, to help nonprofits and foundations make “sound and sharp strategic decisions.” Contact: Clark (212) 551-9100, www.emcf.org.
Attorney Lois Salisbury will become director of the Packard Foundation’s Children, Families and Communities Program (and its $30 million annual grant-making effort) in March. She succeeds Lorraine Zapporetti, who departed after two years on the job. Salisbury comes to Packard after eight years as CEO of Oakland, Calif.-based Children Now. Salisbury oversaw the organization’s expansion to a 30-staff operation with national scope. Contact: Children Now (510) 763-2444, www.childrennow.org; Packard (650) 948-7658, www.packfound.org.
Mary Bitterman started this month as CEO of San Francisco-based James Irvine Foundation, following the retirement of 15-year president Dennis Collins. In her eight years as CEO of San Francisco’s KQED, the most-watched public television station in the country, Bitterman increased financial support for programming while raising an additional $50 million for the KQED Campaign for the Future. Contact: (415) 777-2244, www.irvine.org.
Elsewhere in the city, Bob Gamble was hired as executive director of The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Charitable Funds, whose grant-making priorities include violence prevention and social services programs, some international in scope but centered in the Bay Area. Gamble worked for eight years as deputy director for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency before coming to the fund as deputy director in 1997. Contact: (415) 788-9090, www.goldmanprize.org.
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation replaced resigned president Paula DiPerna with culture program officer and director of portfolio investments Ellen Alberding. The foundation’s acting director, Lawrence Hansen, will return to the vice president’s position. Contact: (312) 782-2464, www.joycefdn.org.
Kathleen Enright, former group director of marketing and communications for Board Source (formerly the National Center for Nonprofit Boards), is the first executive director at the new Los Altos, Calif.-based Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Enright previously directed a Ford Foundation grant to promote collaboration between nonprofits and local governments for the National Association of Development Organizations Research Foundation. Contact: (202) 452-6262, www.boardsource.org.
Nicole Jones and Sandra Martinez took over as program directors for the violence prevention division of the California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) last month. Jones moved to TCWF from a similar position at the California Community Foundation, while Martinez leaves a post as executive director at the Progressive Los Angeles Network, a 2-year-old political action group.
Departing from TCWF is program officer Michael Balaoing. Contact: (818) 593-6600, www.tcwf.org.
Darren Walker was appointed by the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation to direct the Working Communities division. Walker comes to Rockefeller from his chief operating officer position at the Abyssinian Development Corp., a church-based group with a $7 million annual budget to revitalize Harlem. Contact: (212) 869-8500, www.rockfound.org.
Urvashi Vaid, formerly a program officer for the governance and civil society unit at the peace and social justice program at the Ford Foundation, has moved up to the unit’s deputy director. Contact: (212) 573-5000, www.fordfound.org.
Gloria Primm Brown, a senior program officer at the Carnegie Corp., is retiring after 30 years. Brown serves on the national advisory board of the Wallace Fund’s Public Libraries as Partners in Youth Development and the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers. She managed much of Carnegie’s youth-related grant-making before shifting to grant-making in Africa. (212) 371-3200, www.carnegie.org.
National Nonprofits
Carol Rasco, a former director at the U.S. Department of Education’s America Reads Challenge, takes over as CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). She replaces longtime director William Trueheart, who now runs the Pittsburgh Foundation. Rasco got her start as an advocate for children with disabilities while teaching sixth grade in Arkansas, drawing the attention of then-Gov. Bill Clinton. After spending the next 10 years working for the governor, Rasco followed him to the White House as the assistant for domestic policy and chairwoman of the Domestic Policy Council from 1992-97. She can skip adult education courses on the fundamentals of fundraising: RIF received $24 million from Congress in this year’s Education budget for the Inexpensive Book Distribution Program, funded by the department since 1976. Contact: (202) 673-1522, www.rif.org.
The D.C.-based Center for Community Change’s (CCC) president for the past 34 years plans to leave in December. Andrew Mott, who has worked at the CCC since 1968, will resume his role as a public policy advocate and writer. New staff include organization development specialists Pedro Aviles, who moves to CCC from D.C.’s Latin American Youth Center, and Hubert Dixon, previously a field representative for the D.C.-based Catholic Campaign for Human Development. George Walker, the former assistant director of the Peace Development Fund in Amherst, Mass., becomes the center’s first director of evaluation. Contact: (202) 342-0567, www.communitychange.org.
Sue Stepleton will take up duties this month as CEO of St. Louis-based Parents as Teachers National Center (PAT), leaving the executive director post across town at Edgewood Children’s Center after 12 years. Stepleton chairs the National Advisory Committee for Family Support and Family Preservation for the Child Welfare League of America. PAT provides parental education and support to families worldwide. The 60-staff organization receives $900,000 of its $6.8 million dollar budget from a congressional earmark from the Corporation for National Service. Contact: (314) 432-4330, www.patnc.org.
Darcy Ann Olsen continues her precocious rise within the conservative nonprofit elite. The 30-year-old former director of education and child policy at the CATO Institute left in October after four years. A critic of government-funded youth services (especially after-school programs) Olsen is now executive director of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a Libertarian think tank that, Olsen says, “tries to make Arizona the beacon of freedom in the states.” Contact: (602) 462-5000, www.goldwaterinstitute.org.
The New York-based National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), with a staff of 65 and a $4.5 million annual budget, has hired Kimberly Barnes-O’Connor to run its LIFT (Let’s Invest in Families Today) Project. Barnes-O’Connor was widely considered one of Capitol Hill’s most knowledgeable and influential staffers on children and youth issues. As director of children’s policy since 1992 on what is now known as the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Barnes-O’Connor was the legislative architect and chief behind-the-scenes promoter of the Younger Americans Act. She first worked for Sen. Nancy Kassenbaum (R-Kan.), then Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.). Jeffords gave up the HELP Committee chairmanship when he left the GOP last May, costing Barnes-O’Connor her job.
The LIFT Project, which moves into a new D.C. office next month, is a multi-year, $10 million to $15 million program developed with the help of the Mott Foundation and largely funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (Packard, Casey Family Programs and the Ford Foundation have also kicked in). The LIFT campaign will provide research-based resources to policy-makers and advocates to increase social investments (namely child care, health insurance, transportation and workforce development) aimed at assisting low-income children and families. Contact: (212) 304-7100.
Departing the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) after four years as vice president for policy is Suzanne Martinez. An attorney, she spent more than 20 years on Capitol Hill working for Sens. Allan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), where she became known as a consistent friend of children. Now she’s vice president of public policy for the New York-based Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Her new job is one of the toughest in the youth-related field, as Congress and the White House address one controversial reproductive health policy issue after. Contact: (212) 541-7800, www.plannedparenthood.org.
Stepping in as director of the Portland-based National Resource Center for Safe Schools (NRCSS) is Rex Hagans, former director of the National Mentoring Center, located along with NRCSS at Portland’s Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Previous NRCSS President Carlos Sundermann will assume a new position within the laboratory, becoming unit manager for planning and program development. Contact: (800) 268-2275, www.safetyzone.org.
Youth Service America Director Steve Culbertson has hired service-learning veteran Silvia Golembek as vice president for programs. She facilitated learning activities for youth practitioners across the globe as learning manager at the Baltimore-based International Youth Foundation. There, she started the “What Works in Youth Development?” publication series. Golembek replaces Mike McCabe, now deputy director of the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. Contact: (202) 296-2992, www.ysa.org.
Joe Scantlebury started the new year as the director of the newly formed National Center for Ex-offender Programs and Policy (an arm of the New York-based Legal Action Center). He is the former executive director of New York-based STRIVE Inc. Contact: (800) 223-4044, www.lac.org.
Phoenix-based Make-A-Wish Foundation of America appointed Mary Kay Phelps and Paul Velaski as vice presidents. Phelps, who will work in the marketing and development division of the foundation, was a senior marketing director at the D.C.-based American Red Cross. Assigned to national operations, Velaski comes to Make-A-Wish from the Exploris Children’s Museum in Raleigh, N.C., where he headed the development office. Contact: (800) 722-9474, www.wish.org.
Health field veteran Karen Troccoli is the new director of state and local action for the D.C.-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, directed by Sarah Brown. Troccoli penned a chapter in the campaign’s tool kit, “Get Organized,” and co-authored “Like It Is: A Teen Sex Guide” while serving as project director for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She will be the primary liaison for the 28-member Task Force on State and Local Action, and will oversee the campaign’s new resource bureau. The campaign has 22 staff and recently received a $1.6 million renewal grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Contact: (202) 478-8500, www.teenpregnancy.org.
The D.C.-based National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families has elected Dwaine Simms, a national replication manager at parenting group-pioneer MELD in Minneapolis, as its new board president. Also on the board are Chicago-based Family Support America Vice President Kirk Harris (vice president); Patricia Littlejohn (treasurer), a program officer at Columbia, S.C.-based Sisters of Charity Foundation; Bryan Nelson (secretary), an early childhood development consultant in Minneapolis; Atlanta health program consultant Ronnie Jenkins; Geraldo Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Community & Senior Services; and Gardner Wiseheart, director of the Dads Make a Difference Program of Healthy Start in San Angelo,
Texas. Contact: (202) 737-6680, www.npnff.org.
National Education Association (NEA) lobbyist Diane Shust has been promoted to director of government relations. She is a former aide to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). The NEA represents elementary and secondary school teachers, college faculty and school administrators. Contact: (202) 833-4000, www.nea.org.
Kathleen Sheekey has been given the reins at the public interest lobbying developer Advocacy Institute after nine years as co-director. (202) 777-7575, www.advocacy.org.
Washington,D.C.-based Independent Sector (IS), which promotes volunteerism and philanthropy nationwide, named Adrienne Hahn director of government relations. Hahn comes to IS from the Consumers Union in Yonkers, N.Y., where she was senior counsel. Contact: (202) 467-6100, www.indepsec.org.
Joining the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Children’s Partnership from the California Health and Human Services Agency is Kristen Testa. Testa was the lead staffer on Children’s Health Insurance Program legislation for former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), and will lead the Partnership’s “100% Campaign.” The partnership, co-directed by Wendy Lazarus and Laurie Lipper, is an advocacy group that produces multimedia materials and conducts research on children and youth-related issues. Contact: (310) 260-1220, www.childrenspartnership.org.
Government
Surgeon General David Satcher leaves his post Feb. 13 and will return to his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, as director of the National Center for Primary Care. Satcher will first finish working on his memoirs as a fellow at the D.C.-based Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Satcher, who was also a candidate for the dean’s job at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Public Health, has recently released reports on safe sex, mental health and suicide prevention. Contact: (301) 443-4000, www.surgeongeneral.gov.
Sherri Heller is the new commissioner of the nationwide child support system under Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The former deputy secretary for income maintenance in Pennsylvania managed the state’s child support system and its 67 county offices for governor-turned-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Heller replaces Clinton appointee David Gray Ross. Contact: (202) 401-2337, www.acf.dhhs.gov.
Schools
Education authority John McLaughlin will step into a newly created position at the Brown Schools based in Nashville, Tenn. As executive vice president for education leadership and strategic planning, he will report directly to CEO Marguerite Sallee. Brown Schools is a for-profit program working with troubled youth in 11 states and Puerto Rico. Contact: (800) 848-9090, www.brownschools.com.
Passages
Dave Thomas, 70, founder of Wendy’s restaurant chain and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. An adopted child and high school dropout, Thomas was known as the lovable founder who appeared in more than 500 commercials for his chain of restaurants. In 1992 Thomas became a national spokesman on adoption issues.
