Antony Chiang
Empire Health Foundation (EHF) announced the resignation of its President, Antony Chiang. Jeffrey Bell, current Chair of the Board, was appointed Interim President. The board has begun a search for Mr. Chiang’s successor.
Mr. Chiang, EHF’s founding president since 2010, has accepted the role of Chief Executive Officer for Dogwood Health Trust of Asheville, North Carolina, a health conversion foundation with an endowment of approximately $1.5 billion and a mission of improving the health and well-being of all people and communities in Western North Carolina.
As the founding president of EHF and in collaboration with a mission-driven board and a network of community and government leaders, Mr. Chiang designed and guided the foundation’s mission of measurably and sustainably improving the health of people across eastern Washington. His innovative and collaborative approach to philanthropy helped staff deliver programs, policies and systems changes that improved health outcomes and advanced health equity in rural, Tribal and urban communities, along with establishing EHF as a highly-regarded health-based philanthropic leader and innovator at both the regional and national levels.
Under Mr. Chiang’s leadership, EHF grew the impact of its endowment nine-fold, leveraging more than $320 million in new funding to the region and stewarding nearly $70 million in annual funding. In close collaboration with partners, EHF invested in transformative systems change that moved the needle on health and health equity including: radically reducing the uninsured rate in the region, improving the childhood obesity rate, reducing out of school suspension rates and disparities, increasing the pipeline of primary care physicians, reducing the entry rate disparities into foster care, among others. EHF has been recognized with national, state, and regional awards for its innovative approach with partners and measurable impact and results.
Contact: Laura Martin
Phone: 509.294.6985
Email: laura@empirehealthfoundation.org
More information: https://empirehealthfoundation.org/
Dr. John Church
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (AVDF) appointed Dr. John Churchill as Director of Programs. In this role, Dr. Churchill will lead the foundations’ grantmaking activity spanning the five Program Areas of Private Higher Education, Public Media, Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy, Palliative Care, and Environmental Engagement, Stewardship, and Solutions. He joined the foundations on August 9, 2019.
Dr. Churchill joins AVDF from the John Templeton Foundation (JTF), where he served as Director of Philosophy and Theology, a program that oversees approximately $50 million in active grants to organizations spanning the globe. In that capacity, he significantly expanded JTF’s support for interdisciplinary research, especially between scholars in the sciences, philosophy, and theology. He also successfully managed the expansion of the foundation’s support for work in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Since 2011, he designed a variety of grant programs supporting interdisciplinary research on topics such as free will and neuroscience, intellectual humility, and analytic theology. In 2013, the department he led launched a portfolio of “New Frontier” grants that expanded Templeton Foundation funding in areas outside of North America and Western Europe. By 2018, the portfolio had grown to $15 million in active grants supporting academic research and public engagement throughout Latin America, East Africa, and the Middle East, most notably Turkey, Jordan, and the UAE.
Phone: 904.359.0670
Nimrod Goor
The Weinberg Foundation selected its newest trustee, Nimrod Goor. Mr. Goor is the first Israeli trustee in the foundation’s history whose board of trustees includes five outstanding individuals, including: Ambassador Fay Hartog-Levin (Ret.); Paula B. Pretlow; Gordon Berlin; Nimrod Goor; and Robert T. Kelly, Jr. who currently serves as Board Chair.
The foundation will distribute $125 million in grants in 2019, including $12 million in Israel, focused on three priorities: enabling older adults to age in their communities with independence and quality of life; helping individuals obtain quality jobs; and meeting the needs of women and children at risk. Israel has been and will continue to be a priority community for the Weinberg Foundation. Priority communities are cities with personal ties to the life and legacy of Harry Weinberg, as well as cities where current trustees reside and provide leadership. These cities include Baltimore, Maryland, where the foundation’s headquarters is located; Honolulu, Hawaiʿi, where the foundation manages a real estate portfolio; Northeastern Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; New York, New York; and rural communities. The trustees are responsible for setting the policies that guide the foundation’s grantmaking and investment programs.
Mr. Goor is a founding partner at Helios Energy Investments, Israel’s largest private equity fund specializing in renewable energy power generation in Europe and Israel. Prior to Helios, Mr. Goor was a Partner at Precede Technologies. He has held multiple managerial positions in various technology and aerospace companies in the United States and Israel, including Model N, MedSim medical simulation, and Banner Aerospace. In addition to his business activities, Mr. Goor has been engaged in various nonprofit organizations in the United States and Israel, including the San Francisco Federation, AIPAC, and Hausner Jewish Community Day School in Palo Alto, California. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Gvanim Association in Sderot, Israel, as well as a Board Member at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of The American Jewish Joint Distribution’s Lay Leadership Center in Israel. Mr. Goor served seven years with the Israeli Air Force as a combat pilot.
Phone: 410.654.8500
Kathryn Swartz and Lindsay Prunella
The Mat-Su Health Foundation has announced leadership changes for R.O.C.K. Mat-Su (Raising Our Children with Kindness). Kathryn Swartz will serve R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s Interim Director for the next six months, and Lindsay Prunella has been promoted to the position of Operations Manager.
R.O.C.K. Mat-Su is a collaborative of community members who have joined together to promote family resilience and reduce child maltreatment. R.O.C.K. Mat-Su works to build social supports, eliminate silos, and influence systems that affect kids and families throughout the borough, all in support of achieving the goal of ending child abuse in Mat-Su.
In Ms. Swartz’s temporary role with R.O.C.K. Mat-Su, she will lead its staff and work with steering committee members and community partners to keep the collaborative moving forward until a new director is hired. Ms. Swartz comes to R.O.C.K. Mat-Su from her permanent position with the Mat-Su Health Foundation where she serves as special assistant to the CEO and Board Liaison. She was previously a consultant for the World Bank. She received a Ford Foundation Social Justice fellowship and worked for the Cultural Heritage and Education Institute in Fairbanks.
Ms. Prunella has been with the R.O.C.K. Mat-Su staff since 2017. As Operations Manager, she will help advance the mission of R.O.C.K. Mat-Su by working with the director to set strategic goals and make operational decisions, manage the Youth Leadership Board, support R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s community partners, develop and implement communications strategies, and manage grant requirements. Ms. Prunella was previously R.O.C.K. Mat-Su’s Program Coordinator. Prior to that she was a director of a community coalition and prevention specialist in Michigan. She was also a behavioral health clinician and coalition coordinator at Alaska Community Island Services in Wrangell, Alaska.
Contact: Robin Minard
Phone: 907.352.2892
Email: rminard@healthymatsu.org
Marcus Walton
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) appointed Marcus F. Walton, a nonprofit industry veteran, as its new President and CEO. Throughout his distinguished career, Mr. Walton has served as a community organizer, nonprofit practitioner, grantmaker, leadership coach and collaborative change maker who has successfully harnessed the power of change to develop more effective strategies for cultivating thriving communities.
The appointment of Mr. Walton signals a pivotal time for GEO, as it recognizes racial equity as one of the critical cornerstones for effective philanthropy and transformation in its multi-year strategic plan. The GEO board selected him upon unanimous recommendation of a search committee composed of board members, longtime GEO members, and current GEO staff.
As a certified executive coach and facilitator, Mr. Walton has a decades-long record of leading institutional change with community-based and philanthropic organizations, including The Cleveland Foundation and Neighborhood Progress Inc. Subsequently, he served as Vice President & COO of the Association of Black Foundation Executives, where he oversaw operations, HR, staff development, and the administration of racial equity focused programming. Most recently, as Director of Racial Equity Initiatives for Borealis Philanthropy, Mr. Walton worked in partnership with 19 philanthropy-serving organizations to move from transactional to transformative partnership models that close access gaps in marginalized communities, increase engagement, and improve outcomes.
Contact: Joi Ridley
Phone: 202.355.9537
Email: ridley@geofunders.org
Sarah Lyman
Alliance Healthcare Foundation has hired Sarah Lyman as Executive Director to lead the organization in its mission to advance health and wellness for those in need through collaborative funding, convening, and advocacy.
With nearly a decade of experience catalyzing results in health philanthropy, Ms. Lyman brings unique leadership to the intersection of population health, systems change, and collaboration in order to advance health equity.
Prior to joining Alliance, Ms. Lyman served as the Executive Vice President for Empire Health Foundation (EHF) in eastern Washington State, which oversees $70 million per year in funding. She is passionate about finding solutions to complex social issues and creating sustainable positive impact. While at EHF, she was instrumental in designing and building the organization from its inception into a thriving agent for community change, leveraging, and managing resources over 18 times its annual endowed grant making.
She was also a key leader in the effort to launch Family Impact Network, the first network administrator in Washington to implement performance-based contracting in the child welfare system. In 2017, Ms. Lyman established Washington State’s first Program Administrator for the $100 million Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment and served as the organization’s inaugural Executive Director.
Notable honors include the Council on Foundations and HUD Secretary’s Award for Public Philanthropic Partnership, and a first-place award for small businesses in “Best Places to Work” by the Journal of Business. In 2014, she was selected as one of Terrance Keenan Institute’s Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy through Grant Makers in Health. Ms. Lyman has served on a variety of boards including Volunteers of America, Spokane Teaching Health Center (for which she also served as interim Executive Director), the Washington State Public Health Association and Partnering for Progress, among others.
Contact: Carl Nettleton
Phone: 858.353.5489
Email: carl@nettstrategies.com