Nonprofits
The National Human Services Assembly (NHSA) hired Karen Heller Key to serve as vice president of programs for both the assembly and the National Collaboration for Youth. The latter is the NHSA division formerly overseen by Pam Garza, who is now National 4-H Council project director.
Key goes to NHSA from the AARP, where she spent six years, most recently serving as national director of volunteer alliances. She will help NHSA’s CEO, Irv Katz, implement the strategic plan approved by the NHSA board this year.
It calls for, among other things, a sharper focus on organization capacity building of member agencies and the development of a specific agenda for the assembly’s children and youth policy and research work, with tangible results to show by 2009.
NHSA also took on two high-profile youth policy experts as consultants. Terry Modglin, executive director of Youth Crime Watch of America, will step in as a policy specialist for Key at the National Collaboration for Youth. Uber-consultant Seth Turner, whose clients have included the Campaign for Youth Justice and the National Youth Employment Coalition, is handling NHSA’s Newsbytes and Family Strengthening News, the newsletter at the center of the organization’s effort to help its members build capacity. Contact: (202) 347-2080, www.nassembly.org.
Linda Golodner, co-founder of the D.C.-based Child Labor Coalition and president of its parent National Consumers League, is retiring after 24 years. Golodner, who remains on the league’s board of directors, will be sent off with the Trumpeter Award, the organization’s highest honor for service to consumers and workers.
Tapped to fill Golodner’s shoes is Sally Greenberg, a senior attorney with the Yonkers, N.Y.-based Consumers Union since 1997. Contact: (202) 835-3323, http://www.stopchildlabor.org.
The Irving, Texas-based Boys Scouts of America (BSA) has a new chief scout executive. Assistant chief scout and 36-year BSA employee Robert Mazzuca was promot e d to succeed his former boss, Roy Williams, who is retiring after seven years in the Scouts’ top professional spot. Mazzuca will oversee BSA’s empire of 300 councils, 1.2 million volunteers and approximately 4.6 million scouts. Contact: (972) 580- 2000, www.scouting.org.
Beth Kraemer is in as director of the Piscataway, N.J.-based Answer, a project of Rutgers University’s Center for Applied Psychology, which provides comprehensive sex education materials. Kraemer was founding president of the D.C.-based Social Enterprise Alliance, which helped build sustainable nonprofits through earned-income strategies. Answer is best known for its magazine and website, Sex, Etc. Contact: (732) 445-7929, www.sexetc.org.
Toni Smith is the new deputy executive director of the D.C.-based Docs for Tots, a national network of doctors advocating for improved health services for young children. Smith is the founding president of In Reach, Inc., and former department administrator of Pediatrics and Child Health at Howard University Hospital. Contact: (202) 589-0103, www.docsfortots.org.
The Mentor Consulting Group this summer named Janet Forbush, a senior analyst on the team that evaluated the Department of Justice’s Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP), to head evaluation and research. The 10-year-old Norwalk, Conn.- based firm is a small technical assistance provider for schools, government agencies, faith-based organizations and nonprofits that are trying to implement adult-to-youth mentoring systems. The group is headed by Susan Weinberger, a consultant on mentoring issues to just about every youth-related federal agency. Contact: (203) 846-9608, www.mentorconsultinggroup.com.
Focus on the Family, with about 1,300 staff members and a $120 million budget, has weathered its tax-exemption storm. The IRS investigated the conservative Colorado Springs nonprofit after the D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics questioned founder James Dobson’s endorsement of Republican candidates in 2004. The agency announced in September that its “examination revealed that Dr. Dobson’s reported remarks did not occur in publications of Focus on the Family, did not occur at functions of Focus on the Family.” Contact: (800) 232- 6459, www.family.org.
Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) Editor Cathi Dunn MacRae is retiring after 11 years leading the publication, which specializes in news and resources for librarians working with youth. She took over in 1997 for Founder Dorothy Broderick, who started VOYA in 1978 with Mary Chelton. Like her predecessors, MacRae served as a librarian for young adults for 20 years before joining VOYA. MacRae says she will take time off before pursuing freelance projects. Contact: (888) 486- 9297, www.voya.com.
New York’s Partnership for After School Education (PASE) hired Rochell Wimpfheimer, president of the YMCA of Greater New York, as its new executive director. Wimpfheimer takes over for retiring Janet Kelly, who became PASE’s founding executive director when it was incorporated in 1998. Kelly will continue to do some consulting. Contact: (212) 571-2664, www.pasesetter.org.
Foundations
Margaret McKenna is the new president of the Bentonville, Ark.- based Wal-Mart Foundation, which in recent years has topped all corporate foundations in annual grant making ($270 million last year, according to its website). McKenna served 20 years as president of Lesley University, which trains students to become leaders in education, human services, the arts and environmental studies at campuses in Massachusetts, Colorado, Nevada and Israel. Contact: (800) 925-6278, www.walmartfoundation.org.
William Truehart has retired after six years as CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation. Under Truehart, who came to Pittsburgh after running literacy giant Reading Is Fundamental in Washington, the foundation increased its assets by 40 percent. A search committee has been formed to find Truehart’s successor. Contact: (412) 391-5122, www.pittsburghfoundation.org.
Feds
Karen Morison has replaced Harry Wilson as the head of the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Morison came to FYSB from her job as senior vice president of Civic Enterprise, whose clients include the National Mentoring Partnership, the America’s Promise Alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Morison is better known in the youth field for two documents she helped to write: the final report of the White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth (for which she served as staff director) and “The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts,” a study she produced with former Freedom Corps Director John Bridgeland (who founded Civic Enterprises) and John DiIulio, former head of the U.S. Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Morison has also served as public policy director for Shepherd Smith at the Institute for Youth Development.
Morison will work under Diane Rath, who took over for Wilson’s old boss, Wade Horn, as assistant secretary for family support at HHS. Contact: (202) 205-8102, www.acf.hhs.gov.
Regina Schofield, an assistant attorney general who headed the U.S. Office of Justice Programs (2007 budget: $238 million), resigned effective Sept. 30. Schofield, who in 2002 served as director of intergovernmental affairs at HHS, went to the Justice Department in the summer of 2005. She moves on to Casey Family Programs, the Seattle-based nonprofit that works for foster care reform, as managing director of public policy. Contact: (202) 307-0627, www.ojp.usdoj.gov.
Six years after the tragedy that prompted the creation of the USA Freedom Corps, President Bush announced on Sept. 11 that Henry Lozano would join the administration as a deputy assistant in charge of the corps. The Freedom Corps was created to build on the generosity and spirit of volunteerism borne of the Sept. 11 attacks, and was initially headed by Bush domestic adviser John Bridgeland.
Lozano comes to the nation’s capital from San Diego, where he was CEO of Californians for Drug-Free Youth, and before that was executive director of Southern California Teen Challenge for 11 years. This marks Lozano’s first stint in Washington, but he has been on the national radar for a while. He served on the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service from 2003 until this year, is a current board member for the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, has been a personal guest of Bush at the State of the Union address, and in 2004 was awarded the Johnson Institute’s America Recovers Awards for overcoming addiction and helping others achieve recovery. Contact: (877) 872-2677, www.freedomcorps.gov.
Crime
Two Virginia women have sued the City of Newport News for $100 million each after their children were raped in the city’s juvenile detention center. The boys, who were 9 and 12 years old, were raped by cellmates in their mid-teens in 2003 and 2004, respectively. While Newport News Juvenile Services operates a far more modern detention center now, the mothers contend that their sons were raped because the old, overcrowded facility was poorly supervised. “Children who awaited trial were put in cells with older and dangerous predators where arguments, fights and attacks occurred,” the lawsuit states.
Another depressing tale from the youth football world: A month after a shooting marred a Cincinnati tournament to promote peace, police in South Miami are investigating the apparent murder of popular youth football coach Adrian Ellis, found shot to death in a car at the age of 35. Ellis was a local hero. He grew up in the area and landed a scholarship to the University of Miami, but trouble with the law got him booted out of school. (He had been arrested 13 times since 1990, but convicted only once on a petty theft charge.) After playing at the University of Central Florida, Ellis continued to have run-ins with the legal system into his early 30s. Recently, however, the volunteer coach of the South Miami Grey Ghosts was gaining clout as a community leader, particularly on youth issues. Ellis sat on the board of the South Miami Community Redevelopment Agency and chaired the area’s Head Start Policy Council.
Passages
Joe Healy, 59, intake coordinator for the consultation division of the Child Welfare League of America. Healy served the league for more than a decade, and was one of the most visible and crucial national staff members for the CWLA’s fieldbased personnel.
