Nonprofit CEO to Lead Grant Makers’ Group

New Job: Vikki N. Spruill, 54, will become president of the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers, on July 1.

Career path: Since 2006 she has been president of the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that mobilizes people to help protect oceans. Before that she started SeaWeb, a nonprofit that uses communications tools to educate people about threats to oceans. She also helped create FoundationWorks, which shows grant makers how to improve their communications strategies, and served as director of the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, a research project that looks at how people perceive foundations. Her career has included 15 years in public relations.

Education: She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Loyola University New Orleans and a master’s degree in communications from the University of West Florida.

Why she was selected: “She has a fundamental understanding of both the importance of being member focused and what it takes to be a relevant 21st-century association,” says Carol Larson, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and chair of the council’s board.

Philosophy she will apply to her new job: Ms. Spruill hopes to draw on her experience to help the council “communicate the role and impact of philanthropy more effectively.” One problem, she says, is that foundations tend to explain what they do in terms of how much money is spent instead of “what those amounts have generated.”

Salary: She declined to reveal it.

What she’s reading: Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen; The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain; and Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims.