(WASHINGTON, October 25, 2010) — Independent Sector members elected seven new members to the Board of Directors, and two new officers began one-year terms. The elections were part of the annual business meeting held in conjunction with the 2010 Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. New officers include Stephen B. Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, who began his term as board chair, and Gary Yates, president and CEO of The California Wellness Foundation, who took the position of secretary.

“It is an honor to be elected chair of the board of Independent Sector at this critical time in our nation’s history,” said Heintz. “The sector’s role is more important than ever in meeting critical societal needs. IS, as the voice of the sector, has a vitally important role to play in working with government and business to advance key social goals for our common good.”

Returning officers include Vice Chair Kevin H. Taketa, president and CEO of the Hawai’i Community Foundation, and Treasurer Lorie A. Slutsky, president of The New York Community Trust. Ralph B. Everett, president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who also serves on the board, was named at-large executive committee member.

Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector said, “I look forward to working with all these dynamic leaders in the upcoming year. Their vision, perspective and commitment to the nonprofit and philanthropic community will enable Independent Sector to continue its important work of improving lives and strengthening communities. We also recognize and appreciate the service and stewardship of our seven board members who are retiring.”

Board member Rev. Larry Snyder also presented Diana with a Catholic Charities USA Centennial Medal of Honor. CCUSA is bestowing 100 specially-commissioned Centennial Medals in honor of its 100th anniversary, marking a century of human services for the least among us. The award recognizes Independent Sector’s commitment to the vision and mission of Catholic Charities USA.

Biographies of new officers are as follows:

• Stephen B. Heintz is president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and has held top leadership positions in both the nonprofit and public sectors. Before joining the foundation, Mr. Heintz was Founding President of Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action. D?mos is a public policy research and advocacy organization working to enhance the vitality of American democracy and promote more broadly shared prosperity. Prior to founding Demos, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the EastWest Institute, where he worked on issues of economic reform, civil society development, and international security. Based in Prague, Czech Republic, from 1990 through 1997, Mr. Heintz worked extensively throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States. Prior to joining the EastWest Institute, he developed an extensive track record as a policy analyst and cabinet official in the State of Connecticut, where he served as Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development and Commissioner of the Department of Income Maintenance (Social Welfare). In 1988, he helped draft and secure passage by Congress of "The Family Support Act," the first major effort to reform the nation's welfare system. He has published articles in The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and several books and journals. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University. Mr. Heintz was elected to IS board of directors in 2008 and served as co-chair of the Ad Hoc Group on Independent Sector Strategic Planning.
• Gary L. Yates is president and chief executive officer of The California Wellness Foundation and serves as a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. He is also assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Mr. Yates joined the Foundation in 1992 after more than 20 years of experience in education and public health. His primary area of interest and expertise is adolescent health, about which he has written and spoken extensively. Immediately prior to his association with The California Wellness Foundation, he was associate director of the division of adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Mr. Yates received his undergraduate degree in government from American University in Washington, D.C., and his master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. He served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1970.  Mr. Yates is actively involved in the leadership of numerous philanthropic, civic and community organizations. He previously served as treasurer of Hispanics in Philanthropy, vice chair of the boards of the Council on Foundations and Independent Sector, and chair of the boards of Grantmakers In Health, the Foundation Consortium and Southern California Grantmakers.  In recognition of his civic leadership and work in the field of health and human services, Mr. Yates has received numerous awards and official commendations.
• Ralph B. Everett is the president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a leading think tank that focuses on the concerns of African Americans and other people of color.  Prior to his appointment in January 2007, Mr. Everett was the first African American partner in the law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, where he served 18 years specializing in telecommunications and transportation policy.  He serves on the boards of Cumulus Media Inc., Connected Nation, the Federal Communications Commission’s Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and the Black Leadership Forum.  In 1986, Mr. Everett was named Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where he played a significant role in cable, broadcast and common carrier legislation, as well as regulatory reform of the airline, truck, rail and bus industries. In 1998, President Clinton appointed Mr. Everett as U.S. Ambassador to the International Telecommunications Union’s Plenipotentiary Conference, and that year he also led the U.S. Delegation to the Second World Telecommunication Development Conference in Malta, joining participants from more than 190 nations.  Mr. Everett was a team lead for the Obama-Biden Transition Project Agency Review Working Group responsible for overseeing the U.S. Department of Commerce. Ebony magazine has named Mr. Everett one of the nation’s “150 Most Influential African Americans.”  He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Morehouse College and has a J.D. from Duke University Law School.

IS members elected the following new directors to a first three-year term on the board: Robert W. Briggs, president, GAR Foundation; Kyle Caldwell, president and CEO, Michigan Nonprofit Association; Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Bernard J. Milano, president and trustee, KPMG Foundation and president and trustee, KPMG Disaster Relief Fund; Paul Schmitz, Chief Executive Officer, Public Allies; Roberto Suro, professor of journalism and public policy at the University of Southern California; and Richard B. Williams, president and CEO, American Indian College Fund.

Biographies of new members of the board of directors follow:

Robert W. Briggs is the president of the GAR Foundation and chairman emeritus and former CEO of Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs, a law firm with offices in Ohio and Florida. He became a Knight Foundation trustee in June 2002, was elected vice chair on September 20, 2005 and chair elect in March of 2009. Mr. Briggs began his law career as a staff judge advocate for the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps. He has been with Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs since 1971, where he specializes in corporate, business, and foundation matters. He also serves on the board of directors of First Merit Corporation and several other for-profit companies. An active member of the Akron community who has served with numerous organizations over the years, Briggs is currently involved with a number of regional organizations. He is a board member and co-chair of One Community, and board chair of The National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation. He was chair of the Fund For Our Economic Future, which is an unprecedented collaboration created by more than 80 funders in Northeast Ohio to focus on regional economic development.

Kyle Caldwell is the president and CEO of the Michigan Nonprofit Association (MNA), a statewide nonprofit focused on increasing the capacity of Michigan’s nonprofits to serve, strengthen, and transform communities. Prior to leading MNA, Mr. Caldwell served as the president and CEO of the Connect Michigan Alliance (CMA), a statewide organization focused on promoting and strengthening a life-long ethic of service and civic engagement through the support of community-building initiatives. CMA merged with MNA in 2007. Mr. Caldwell has worked in the private and public sectors, including serving Michigan Governors Engler and Granholm as the executive director of the Michigan Community Service Commission.  He serves on a number of national and state boards and committees including: National Council of Nonprofits; Points of Light Institute; Michigan Association of United Ways; Johns Hopkins Listening Post Steering Committee; Independent Sector Public Policy Committee; Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network Leadership Council; Council of Michigan Foundations Public Policy Committee; Governor’s Foundation Liaison Advisory Committee; and at Johnson Center for Philanthropy Leadership Council at Grand Valley State University.  He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Western Michigan University, where he studied organizational communication.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey is president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a national leader in transforming America’s health systems so people live healthier lives and receive the health care they need. Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey was a leader in academic medicine, government service and her medical specialty of geriatrics before joining RWJF in 2001 as senior vice president and director of the health care group. Previously, at the University of Pennsylvania, she was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of medicine and health care systems and director of Penn’s Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies. Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania; and trained in Geriatrics at Penn.

Bernard “Bernie” J. Milano is president and trustee of the KPMG Foundation and president and trustee of the KPMG Disaster Relief Fund. He is also president and a board member of The PhD Project, a diversity initiative that has more than tripled the number of minority business professors in U.S. colleges and universities. Mr. Milano’s involvements span community, education, and religion. He is a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Points of Light Foundation, serves on their Finance Committee, and chairs the Audit Committee. He is on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Students in Free Enterprise and is chair of the Rules Committee.  For the Business Civic Leadership Center he serves on their Board of Directors and for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, he is a member of the Education, Employment and Training Committee. Mr. Milano was a member of the Board of Directors of Campus Compact from 1998-2004, and started another term July 1, 2010. Relating to education, he has served on numerous boards including AACSB International and the American Accounting Association. He is past president of Beta Alpha Psi and currently sits on the Beta Gamma Sigma Board of Governors. He chairs business school advisory boards at Ramapo College of New Jersey and North Carolina A&T. He holds honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Kent State University and North Carolina A&T. His religion engagement includes Co-Warden (co-chair) of his parish board and he is financial advisor and member of the finance and audit committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N. J.

Paul Schmitz founded Public Allies Milwaukee in 1993, and has served as the national CEO of Public Allies since 2000. Public Allies’ mission is to advance new leadership to strengthen communities, nonprofits, and civic participation. Mr. Schmitz writes and speaks often on topics of national service, civic engagement, community building, diversity, nonprofit workforce development, and social entrepreneurship. He currently serves as chair of the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition; co-chair of Voices for National Service; a board member of Our Good Works; a blogger on leadership for The Washington Post; and a faculty member of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. As a private volunteer, Mr. Schmitz co-chaired the Obama campaign’s civic engagement policy group and was a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Team. Paul graduated phi beta kappa from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1994 with a degree in political science, and received UWM's “Graduate of the Last Decade” alumni award. He was also a Next Generation Leadership Fellow with the Rockefeller Foundation.

Roberto Suro holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California. He is also managing director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC, an interdisciplinary venue for experimentation and research on the digital media revolution and its impact on society. Prior to joining the USC faculty in August 2007, he was director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington D.C. which he founded in 2001, and in 2004 he was part of the management team that launched the Pew Research Center. Suro supervised the production of more than 100 publications that offered non-partisan statistical analysis and public opinion surveys chronicling the rapid growth of the Latino population and its implications for the nation as a whole. Under his leadership, the Center also organized numerous research and policy conferences with a variety of collaborators including the Inter-American Development Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Suro’s journalistic career began in 1974 at the City News Bureau of Chicago as a police reporter, and after tours at the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune he joined TIME Magazine, where he worked as a correspondent in the Chicago, Washington, Beirut and Rome bureaus. In 1985 he started at The New York Times with postings as bureau chief in Rome and Houston. After a year as an Alicia Patterson Fellow, Suro was hired at The Washington Post as a staff writer on the national desk, eventually covering a variety of beats including the Justice Department and the Pentagon and serving as deputy national editor. Suro is author of Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America, Watching America’s Door: The Immigration Backlash and the New Policy Debate, and Remembering the American Dream: Hispanic Immigration and National Policy, as well as more than two dozen book chapters, reports and other publications related to Latinos and immigration. He continues to conduct research and write on the Hispanic population through grant-funded projects and as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution.

Richard “Rick” B. Williams, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, has served as the president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund since October 1997. American Indian College Fund, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Denver, Colorado, raises private support for scholarships, endowments, programs and public awareness on behalf of more than 30 U.S. tribal colleges and universities. Prior to joining the fund, Mr. Williams served both as the director of the Student Academic Service Center and the director of Minority Student Affairs at the University of Colorado. Additionally, he also has served as the director of American Indian Upward Bound, a program designed to provide educational opportunities to Indian youth. Previous board appointments include serving on the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities and Native Americans in Philanthropy. Currently, he serves as a board member for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Endowment Board. In April 2005, the Native American Resource Group and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Department of Anthropology honored Mr. Williams with the Native Educator of the Year award. In October 2005, the National Indian Education Association honored Mr. Williams with the prestigious Educator of the Year award. In 1975, Mr. Williams became the first American Indian student to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received a master’s degree in Education Administration from the University of Wyoming in 1987.

The following board members also were re-elected:

• Ellen S. Alberding, president, The Joyce Foundation
• Susan V. Berresford
• Rev. Larry Snyder, president and CEO, Catholic Charities USA

The board also acknowledged the service of its retiring members:

• J. D. Hokoyama, president and CEO, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics
• Marguerite Kondracke, president and CEO, America’s Promise Alliance
• Janet Murguía, president and CEO, National Council of La Raza
• Andrew D. Plepler, Global Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Policy Executive, Bank of America
• Edward Skloot, director of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society and Professor of the Practice of Public Policy, Duke University
• Arturo Vargas, executive director, National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials Educational Fund
• William S. White, president and CEO, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

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Independent Sector is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of approximately 550 charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs, collectively representing tens of thousands of charitable groups in every state across the nation. Its mission is to advance the common good by leading, strengthening, and mobilizing the nonprofit and philanthropic community.