William Buster
The New Hanover Community Endowment
The New Hanover Community Endowment Inc. has announced its inaugural President and CEO, William Buster. He was recently the Asheville, North Carolina-based Dogwood Health Trust’s Senior Vice President of Impact.
Officially christened in February 2021, the endowment was bestowed $1.24 billion in sale proceeds, the bulk of the acquisition cost paid by Novant Health to purchase the previously county-owned New Hanover Regional Medical Center.
This year, Mr. Buster will oversee the processes of hiring a core team, cementing grantmaking criteria, and ushering out the first grants, infusing the community with potentially tens of millions of philanthropic dollars.
At Dogwood, Mr. Buster oversaw its commitment to diversity and its grantmaking and program-related investment strategies. Before joining Dogwood , Mr. Buster was the Executive Vice President of Community Investments at St. David’s Health Foundation in Austin, Texas. He spent nine years working for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and previously owned a consulting firm, Common-Unity Philanthropic and Nonprofit Advisors.
Lori Cox
California Wellness Foundation
The California Wellness Foundation appointed Lori A. Cox as its new Vice President of Programs, effective April 18. Ms. Cox currently leads the Alameda County Social Services Department, the county’s largest agency with a budget of over $850 million and 2,700 employees and responsibility for allocating over $100 million annually to community serving organizations.
Ms. Cox began with the Social Services Agency in 1995 as a Child Welfare Worker in the Department of Children & Family Services, promoting up to Division Director in 2004. She briefly served as Assistant Agency Director for the Economic Benefits Department in 2010 before being appointed director. Prior to the Social Services Agency, she held roles with nonprofit organizations including the Community Centers of Indianapolis, the East Bay Perinatal Council, Frago Treatment Center, and Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency.
Contact: 818.702.1900.
Julie Ermler
The Ethel and James Flinn Foundation
The Ethel and James Flinn Foundation announced that Julie Ermler, former Vice President of Finance and Administration of the Hudson-Webber Foundation, joined the foundation as Chief Financial Officer on January 1, 2022 to succeed retired Chief Investment Officer, Leonard Smith.
Contact: 313.309.3436.
Ali Foti
New York State Health Foundation
Ali Foti will join the New York State Health Foundation as Program Officer in its Consumer Empowerment area. Ms. Foti was most recently Program Officer at the Mt. Sinai Health Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio. Before that, she worked at the Institute for Patient-Centered Initiatives and Health Equity at the GW Cancer Center and at the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Contact: info@nyshealth.com.
Julian Huerta
St. David’s Foundation
St. David’s Foundation welcomed Julian Huerta as its new Vice President of Community Programs. With more than 30 years of experience in program development, nonprofit administration, and fundraising, he brings a great deal of community-based knowledge, history, compassion, and commitment to its efforts in advancing health equity in the community. Mr. Huerta will develop, implement, and support the foundation’s direct service portfolio and oversee the mobile dental program and Neal Kocurek Scholarship program—two of the largest examples of such initiatives in the country. He will also lead efforts to engage with external constituencies to help grow and support a philanthropic culture throughout central Texas.
In this newly created position, Mr. Huerta’s experience as an innovative and bold community leader with a deep understanding of cross-sector partnerships will help the foundation to accelerate its efforts to address the needs of those who are disproportionately impacted by systemic inequities. Mr. Huerta joins Regan Gruber Moffitt, Vice President of Community Investments, who oversees the foundation’s strategic grantmaking.
Contact: info@stdavidsfoundation.org.
Laura Lane
CDC Foundation
Laura Lane, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at UPS, has been elected to a five-year term on the board of directors of the CDC Foundation. In this role, Ms. Lane will join other board members to provide guidance and oversight to the foundation, which is the independent nonprofit created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the critical health protection work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) and the public health community.
Ms. Lane began her career at UPS as President, Global Public Affairs in 2011 and was responsible for worldwide government affairs activities for UPS in over 220 countries and territories. She managed a global team of more than 80 government affairs and strategic communications professionals. In this role, she strengthened UPS’s growth and competitiveness, including successfully advocating for comprehensive tax and pension reform, enhancing network efficiencies through infrastructure investments, securing alternative fuel credits in support of sustainability, working to modernize trade agreements and customs processes, leveling the playing field with postal networks, facilitating UPS Flight Forward certification, and advocating for laws that promote equity and justice in the workplace.
Prior to her time at UPS, Ms. Lane served in both the public and private sectors. She was Managing Director and Head of International Government Affairs at Citigroup and Vice President for Global Public Policy with Time Warner. She served as a Trade Negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the negotiation of China’s entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the WTO Financial Services Agreement and the WTO Basic Telecommunications Agreement. She also served as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1990-1997, including serving as Consular/Economic Officer in Bogota, Colombia, and then at the American Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda.
Ms. Lane currently serves as a member of the Board of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees USA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Woodruff Arts Center, and the German-American Business Council. She served as co-chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa and as a United States government appointed delegate for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory.
Contact: Amy Tolchinsky at 404.523.3486.
Dr. Susan Mims
Dogwood Health Trust
Dogwood Health Trust’s Interim Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Susan Mims is now the permanent CEO of the foundation. Dr. Mims garnered praise from search committee members for her leadership skills and commitment to improving the health and well-being of Western North Carolina citizens.
Dr. Mims took the interim CEO role after Antony Chiang stepped down in September 2020. She has more than 20 years of experience in clinical and health care leadership. Before becoming Dogwood’s interim CEO, Dr. Mims was Chair of the Department of Community and Public Health at UNC Health Sciences at the Mountain Area Health Education Center. She served in numerous roles with the Mission Health network of WNC hospitals, including Mission Children’s Hospital chief executive for more than a decade.
Sonia Quiñónez, Kimberley Ragnartz, and Rachel Ermann Lynch
The Northern Virginia Health Foundation
The Northern Virginia Health Foundation (NVHF) announced new board members and key staff transitions. Sonia Quiñónez, Director of Strategic Grantmaking at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Kimberley Ragnartz, Vice President of Delivery System Operations for Kaiser Permanente in Northern Virginia, will join NVHF’s board of directors. Rachel Ermann Lynch joins the NVHF staff as program officer, succeeding Tricia Rodgers, who retired in December 2021.
To learn about the new members and NVHF staff transitions, click here.
Contact: 703.486.5691.
Dr. Yanique Redwood
if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility
if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility President and CEO Dr. Yanique Redwood is stepping down after nine years of bold and impactful leadership. In April, she will become the Executive Director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University under the leadership of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.
Dr. Yanique’s stewardship of if has been transformative. Through her leadership, the foundation has been encouraged to dream the future while carefully attending to the now. She has helped the organization pace its evolution with a commitment to inclusivity, and from a place of learning and humility. She has supported it to embrace the journey as personal, and she has asked the team to be unrelenting in their approach to building their practice as a community to effect systemic change.
In the interim, if’s Senior Program Officer, Ria Pugeda, will serve as the President and CEO.
Contact: info@iffdn.org.
Dr. Eric Schnieder
National Committee for Quality Assurance
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) appointed distinguished health services scholar Eric Schneider, MD, MSc to lead its measurement, research, and contracting agenda as Executive Vice President of the NCQA Quality Measurement and Research Group. In this role, he will help drive NCQA’s efforts to create a more equitable health care system and to advance the move to digital quality measurement.
Dr. Schneider comes to NCQA from The Commonwealth Fund, where he was Senior Vice President for Policy and Research and a member of its executive management team. He has a long history with NCQA, most recently as Co-Chair of its Committee on Performance Measurement. He served on that committee for more than ten years, including nine as Co-Chair.
Prior to his tenure at The Commonwealth Fund, Dr. Schneider was Principal Researcher at the RAND Corporation and held the RAND Distinguished Chair in Health Care Quality. As the first director of Rand’s Boston office, Dr. Schneider built its highly regarded multidisciplinary team of health services researchers. As a professor at the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School Dr. Schneider taught health policy and practiced primary care internal medicine for 25 years.
Widely regarded as one of the nation’s preeminent health services researchers, Dr. Schneider has authored more than 125 published peer-reviewed research investigations and dozens of other scientific or medical research publications, reviews, chapters, editorials, and more. His work has focused on four aspects of health care quality—performance measurement methods; evaluation of quality and safety measurement in public reporting and financial incentive programs; use of health care quality measures to assess racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health care quality; and evaluation of innovative approaches in health insurance, organization and financing of health care, and the organization of health care delivery.
He is a member of the AcademyHealth board of directors and a fellow of both the American College of Physicians and the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Haley Wicker
Mary Black Foundation
The Mary Black Foundation named Haley Wicker as Program Director of Early Childhood Development, succeeding Keisha Gray, who left the foundation at the end of February. Ms. Gray has accepted a position as HR Director with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Ms. Wicker joined the foundation in 2015 as the Project Assistant for Connect, an adolescent health initiative. In 2018, she was promoted to Manager of Communications and Organizational Learning.
Contact: Molly-Talbot Metz at mmetz@maryblackfoundation.org.
Catherine Woodling and Dwayne Watkins
East Lake Foundation
The East Lake Foundation announced the promotion and a role change for two current members of its team.
Catherine Woodling has been promoted from Director of Marketing and Communications to Deputy
Executive Director. This promotion recognizes the role Ms. Woodling has been serving across the East Lake Initiative and in the community above and beyond her marketing and communications responsibilities for the last several years.
Dwayne Watkins, currently serving as the foundation’s Data Manager, will now serve as its Impact and Engagement Manager. This new role better defines the broader outreach and engagement work he has been doing with the foundation’s Resident and Community Support Program (RCSP), beyond capturing data and recognizes the skills he’s gained as he completes his Master’s in Public Health from The George Washington University later this summer.
As announced last month, East Lake Foundation President and CEO Daniel (Danny) Shoy, Jr., left his role at the foundation on January 31 after serving the East Lake community for 12 impactful years. On February 14, he will rejoin The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation as its new Managing Director of Youth Development, leading the Blank Family Foundation’s and Blank Family of Businesses’ impact on youth in Georgia and Montana.
Ms. Woodling will lead the foundation while the board of directors works to identify an Executive Director.
Dr. Jan Yost and Dr. Amie Shei
The Health Foundation
The Health Foundation has approved a staff leadership transition plan with the intention of furthering its distinguished grantmaking impact in Central Massachusetts. Dr. Jan Yost, the founding President and CEO of The Health Foundation, will retire in the spring of 2022 after nearly 23 years of highly valued service. Dr. Amie Shei has been appointed as President & CEO-elect effective immediately and will fully assume the leadership role when Dr. Yost retires. Dr. Shei has been ably serving since 2016 as the foundation’s Vice President for Programs.
Formally established with $60 million in assets, the foundation began its grantmaking in 2000, and since that time, it has funded its operations and awarded grants totaling over $50 million to improve the health of those who live or work in Central Massachusetts. The foundation’s assets are currently valued at approximately $95 million.