Marsha Atkind and Michael Schmidt
Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey
The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey (HFNJ) announced that Michael Schmidt will assume the role of Executive Director/CEO effective July 1, 2021, following the retirement of Marsha Atkind.
Most recently, Mr. Schmidt served 10 years as the Director of the American Jewish Committee, New York Regional Office, where he developed award-winning programs that strengthened ties with key civic and faith leaders throughout the Asian, Black, Latinx, and Muslim communities.
Outgoing Executive Director/CEO Marsha Atkind is retiring after almost 13 years at HFNJ. Throughout her tenure, Ms. Atkind worked closely with three board chairs to establish a strong presence in Essex County, New Jersey’s health care and philanthropic communities, distributing on average $8 million a year to agencies focused on improving the physical and mental health of the most vulnerable, underserved residents in both Greater Newark and the Greater MetroWest , New Jersey Jewish communities.
The most recent highlight of Ms. Atkind’s tenure is the approval of a $5 million grant to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center to expand and modernize the hospital’s emergency department, which will be renamed The Healthcare Foundation of NJ Emergency Services Pavilion. Other significant initiatives aimed at solving systemic issues and inequities include a hospital-acquired delirium prevention and treatment program, pediatric integrated care projects, Census 2020 Complete Count support, and the Foundation’s ACA Education and Enrollment Initiative.
Contact: Marsha Atkind at 973.204.92921 or matkind@hfnj.org.
Roque Barros Jr.
Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation
The Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation (IVWF) hired Roque Barros, Jr. as its first Executive Director. Mr. Barros has had an exemplary career working to improve the lives of people in underserved communities.
Mr. Barros most recently served as the Director for the Ford Institute for Community Building, an arm of the Ford Family Foundation. In that role, he was responsible for the development and coordination of more than 90 local projects serving thousands of individuals across Oregon and Northern California. He managed a budget of $2.7 million and developed a community building approach that has been widely adopted throughout the rural communities in the area served by the Ford Institute.
Prior to his work at the Ford Family Foundation, Mr. Barros spent 16 years at the Jacobs Family Foundation and the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in San Diego. During his tenure they developed Market Creek Plaza, a commercial and cultural center focused on the resident ownership of neighborhood change. Barros led the efforts in helping the community create the change they wanted to see in their community which included the first-ever Community Development Initial Public Offering.
IVWF was established in 2019 and has been operating with volunteers since that time. The organization was formed following the offer of a challenge grant from the San Diego-based Alliance Healthcare Foundation. Alliance offered to provide IVWF $7.5 million if the new organization could raise $17.5 million. With the match completed, IVWF will have a $25 million endowment in place that would provide more than $1 million to the community each year to address health and wellness issues for the most vulnerable in the region.
Contact: Jose Landeros at 760.352.3411 or jose@davidhwest.com.
Jennie Blake
Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts
The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts welcomed Ms. Jennie Blake, MSW in the position of Senior Program Officer. Ms. Blake comes to the foundation with 18 years of experience working on both sides of the philanthropic sector, including 10 years as a fundraising consultant for nonprofits and eight years with the Cox Foundations, which is comprised of multiple foundations affiliated with Cox Enterprises, a private communications and automotive services company based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ms. Blake will assume primary responsibility for the development and implementation of the foundation’s Activation Fund grants, which are typically one-year grants for discrete projects aimed at helping nonprofit organizations working to improve health in Central Massachusetts shift to a higher level of capacity that can be sustained over time. She will provide technical assistance to applicants and grantees, manage the award process, monitor grants, and assist in evaluating the foundation’s impact.
Contact: Jennie Blake at 508.438.0009 or jblake@hfcm.org.
Maria Blanco, Kris Hayashi, Dr. Daniel E. Walker, Torie Weiston-Serdan, Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño, Kurt Chilcott, and Kate Kendell
The California Endowment
The California Endowment elected a new Board Chair and Vice Chair along with an additional four dynamic individuals to its governing board. The four members represent areas of youth mentoring and engagement, LGBTQ issues, Immigration, legal advocacy, cultural arts, and narrative change. The new board members will serve a three-year term on and are eligible to serve a total of three terms.
New board members are Maria Blanco, Kris Hayashi, Dr. Daniel E. Walker, and Torie Weiston-Serdan.
The Endowment also elected Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño as the new Board Chair. Ms. Bishop Carcaño has served on the Endowment’s board since 2015 and is currently the Sacramento-based Bishop of the California-Nevada Conference of The United Methodist Church. Bishop Carcaño serves on several nonprofit boards, including the Councilon Foreign Relations Religious Advisory Committee, The Southwest Industrial Education Fund Advisory Board, the African University Board of Trustees, and the General Council on Finance and Administration of the world-wide United Methodist Church. While serving as the Bishop of the Los Angeles Area of the United Methodist Church she was an active member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious leaders.
She is a recognized immigrant rights advocate who has published numerous articles on the issue of the rights of migrants and has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.
Kurt Chilcott was elected as Vice-Chair of the foundation’s board of directors. A recognized leader in economic development and small business finance, Mr. Chilcott joined the Board of The California Endowment in 2019 bringing more than 35 years of experience in economic development to an already accomplished board.
Mr. Chilcott has led innovative successful organizations and programs in the public and nonprofit sectors, serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the San Diego-headquartered CDC Small Business Finance for more than 20 years. The nonprofit organization has experienced tremendous growth, establishing offices throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada, and maintaining its rank as the top-volume CDC in the nation under Mr. Chilcott’s leadership.
In addition to the new board announcements, The Endowment announced the appointment of Kate Kendell, Esq. as the first-ever Chief of Staff for the foundation and its CEO/President Dr. Robert K Ross.
Ms. Kendell joins the staff after a successful nine years as a member of the board of directors. Ms. Kendell recently served as interim Chief Legal Officer at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She also served for 22 years as the Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a national organization that fights for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Ms. Kendell will assist and support the Executive Team, and will play a key role in the development and implementation for the Endowment’s future work, helping to deepen the racial equity efforts of the organization. She will also support grantmaking from the CEO’s office, and ensure the prioritization of critical issues and required information for the CEO to help facilitate efficiency and provide timely decision-making.
Contact: Sarah Reyes at 559.443.5306 or sreyes@calendow.org.
Roxanne Cuebas
The Health Foundation for Western & Central New York
The Health Foundation for Western & Central New York welcomed Roxanne Cuebas as Program Manager. In this role, Ms. Cuebas will assist in assessing incoming grant requests, develop recommendations, and present promising proposals for funding approval. She will also monitor and oversee funded projects across central and western New York.
Formerly Project Administrator for Catholic Health’s Community Partners of Western New York, she worked with community stakeholders to develop sustainable programs to improve health outcomes for high risk and underserved Medicaid populations. Specific areas of focus included the integration of behavioral health and primary care, telemedicine, palliative care, and COVID Rapid Relief projects.
Prior to Catholic Health, Ms. Cuebas was a team member with the Erie County Department of Senior Services where she assisted with the development and delivery of evidence based programs for older adults.
For six years, Ms. Cuebas volunteered with The Colorful Minds Foundation, handling event planning and promotion, and scholarship fundraising, while focusing on raising awareness to end the stigma associated with mental illnesses.
Dr. Kristen Naney
Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust
The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust announced a new Director of Learning and Impact, Dr. Kristen Naney, who currently works as a public health epidemiologist in the Population Health Division of the Durham County Health Department.
In this role, Dr. Naney will be responsible for learning, measurement, and evaluation to help inform strategic planning and sound decision-making to maximize the Trust’s impact on the communities we serve. This position works at the intersection of strategy, planning, grantmaking, and evaluation in support of the mission and vision of the Trust to improve the health and quality of life of people with low incomes in Forsyth County and throughout North Carolina.
Currently, Dr. Naney creates data briefs and reports for the team, develops study design and data collection methodology, meets with community members to identify needs, and evaluates various metrics to help the Durham County Health Department understand if their work is having the desired impact. Over the past year, she has maintained, analyzed, and updated critical surveillance data related to COVID-19 and population health for internal and external stakeholders.
Prior to joining the Durham County Health Department in 2020, Dr. Naney worked as a Research Assistant Professor for the Center for Outreach in Alzheimer’s Aging and Community Health at North Carolina A&T State University. In this role, she oversaw community outreach and engagement, managed the research team, published manuscripts, and presented at national scientific conferences. She also worked for ICF International, Inc., developing metrics and climate resilience indices for Charleston, South Carolina communities, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Durham where she used her data and evaluation skills to focus on environmental justice issues with impacted communities.
Dr. Naney’s research interests include cumulative risk assessment, community resilience, environmental justice, health and racial equity, decision science, exposure assessment, and chronic diseases. She is currently a member of the Environment and Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association. She has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and received multiple awards, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections Capstone Symposium Award in 2018.
Contact: Nora Ferrell at nora@kbr.org.
Garrick Wong
Alliance Healthcare Foundation
Alliance Healthcare Foundation announced Garrick Wong joined the team in the newly created position of Senior Director of Strategy. Mr. Wong will play an integral role in providing ongoing strategic support, visionary leadership, technical capacity, and project management for Alliance across a variety of issue areas in both its grantmaking programmatic work and its impact investment portfolio.
Mr. Wong joins Alliance from Connecticut Health Foundation where he was Director of Grantmaking. In addition to leading the foundation’s grant making activities, Mr. Wong was also responsible for public policy, leadership development, and nonprofit capacity building efforts. He previously served as Community Benefit Specialist at El Camino Hospital in California, where he guided the organization’s community health improvement initiatives and grantmaking efforts. Prior to joining the hospital, Mr. Wong was a program associate in the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Children, Families, and Communities Program, which works to ensure that all children and their families have access to quality and affordable health insurance coverage. Before that, Mr. Wong was a health policy advocate at the California Immigrant Policy Center.
Contact: Karen Winston at 619.884.6767 or karen.winston@alliancehf.org.