Ex-Kellogg Chief to Oversee Citizenship Conference; Surdna President to Step Down

Courtesy of the National Conference on Citizenship

National Conference on Citizenship

Sterling Speirn has been selected as its new CEO, effective in January. Mr. Speirn has previously led a number of high-profile grant makers, including eight years at the helm of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation before leaving in 2013 to lead the Stupski Foundation as it spent down its assets. Most recently he’s been a strategic adviser on philanthropy and public policy in Washington.

Surdna Foundation

Phillip Henderson, president of the Surdna Foundation since 2007, has announced his intention to resign in 2018, pending the selection of a successor. Surdna, a century-old philanthropy, supports arts and culture, local economic development, and what it calls “next-generation infrastructure.”

Dresner Foundation

Virginia Romano, managing director of programs since 2014, has been promoted to executive director. The foundation had $147 million in assets in 2015, the most recent year for which data was made public.

Global Fund for Children

John Hecklinger has been named president and chief executive officer. He was previously business development director at GlobalGiving.

More new CEOs:

Irene Frye, executive director of the Retirement Research Foundation, has been promoted to president.

Susan Krane, former executive director of the San Jose Museum of Art, has been appointed the first executive director of the Working Assumptions Foundation.

Ryan Mahoney, executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum, has been tapped as executive director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University.

Lorii Rabinowitz, executive director of the start-up and feasibility phase for the Denver Center for Arts & Technology, has joined the Denver Scholarship Foundation as chief executive.

Van Sheets, an entrepreneur and consultant in Dallas, has been named executive director of Educational First Steps. He succeeds John Breitfeller, who is retiring.

Other notable appointments:

Lisa Brown has become chief development officer of Camp Corral, which runs a free summer camp for children from military families. She was previously director of stewardship and prospect research at the YMCA of the Triangle, Camp Sea Gull, and Camp Seafarer.

Zillah Fluker, vice president for institutional advancement at Alabama State University, has left to become vice president for institutional advancement at Miles College.

Daniel Lemm, an accountant at the McKnight Foundation, has joined the Blandin Foundation as director of finance.

Liza O’Connor-Stroud, vice president of the American Ireland Fund, has been named vice president for advancement at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.

Departures

Trip Van Noppen says he will step down as president of Earthjustice before the end of 2018. He has served in the role since 2008.

Legacies

Vanu Bose, a philanthropist in the Boston area and CEO of Vanu Inc., which has been restoring cellular reception in Puerto Rico, died of a pulmonary embolism on November 11. He was 52. His late father, Amar Bose, founded the Bose Corporation, a technology company in Framingham, Mass., that makes headphones and speakers. The Boses are major donors to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: In 2014, they established the Bose Fellows Program at MIT, which gives grants of up to $500,000 over three years to faculty researchers.

Karl Katz, who was a founding curator of the Israel Museum and chairman for special projects as well as the director of the office of film and television at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on November 8. He was 88.

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