The board of the Meyer Foundation in Washington, D.C., has announced the appointment of STEPHANIE SNEED to the newly created role of director for the Fund for Black-led Change. Announced in 2020, the fund is a five-year, $20 million commitment of core support to organizations in the Greater Washington region with Black leadership and that center Black communities. In her new role, Sneed will work with these organizations to develop programming that builds their infrastructure and the power of their movements. She joins the foundation from the Fair Budget Coalition, where she served as co-director and then executive director starting in 2017.

MELANIE CLAXTON has been named senior program officer at the Pittsburgh-based Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, effective June 3. In that role, Claxton, who currently serves as co-chair elect of the Pennsylvania School-Age Child Care Alliance (PENN SACCA), as a committee member of the Allegheny Partners for Out-of-School Time (APOST) executive committee, and as a member of the grantmaking committee of the Three Rivers Community Foundation, will oversee the foundation's grants programs in education. She joins the foundation from Pittsburgh Public Schools, where, as coordinator, out-of-school time, she implemented flexible policies that adapted to the needs of those served, with a focus on informal learning environments.

The Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation in Sarasota, Florida, has announced the hiring of MATTHEW SAUER for the newly created position of collaboration and impact officer. In that role, Sauer will work with foundation leadership to develop and drive grantmaking priorities that promote meaningful changes in the areas of education, humanitarian causes, arts and culture, the environment, and medical research. Sauer spent twenty-eight years at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, in his last year overseeing twenty newsrooms and four hundred journalists in Florida as regional editor for the newspaper's parent company, Gannett.

The Los Angeles-based California Endowment has announced the election of Bishop MINERVA G. CARCANO as its new board chair. Carcaño has served on the endowment's board since 2015 and currently serves as the Sacramento-based bishop of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church. The endowment also announced the election of KURT CHILCOTT, chief executive officer of the San Diego-based CDC Small Business Finance, as vice-chair, and the election of four new members of its governing board. They are: MARIA BLANCO, KRIS HAYASHI, DANIEL E. WALKER, and TORI WEISTON-SERDAN.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago has announced the election of corporate, philanthropy, and governance professional STEPHANIE BELL-ROSE to its board of directors. Most recently a senior managing director of the TIAA Institute, where she led work supporting research and knowledge building to improve effectiveness of nonprofit and educational organizations, Bell-Rose previously served as founding president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and as legal counsel and program officer at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She currently serves on a number of boards, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and co-founded and serves as board vice president of the Steve Fund, a nonprofit promoting mental health of young people of color. Bell-Rose originally is from Brooklyn and she received AB, JD, and MPA degrees from Harvard University.

The Noble Research Institute in Ardmore, Oklahoma, has named CHRISTINA ADCOX as its new director of advancement and strategic partnerships. Adcox brings more than fifteen years of nonprofit leadership experience to Noble, including executive roles with the INTEGRIS Foundation and the American Red Cross of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

In other news, the board of directors of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation in Quincy, Massachusetts, in consultation with outgoing president and CEO Nick Donohue, has appointed GISLAINE N. NGOUNOU, Ed., LD, as interim president and CEO, effective June 1. Ngounou, currently the foundation's vice president of strategy and programs, brings nearly two decades of experience in the education sector, including work with nonprofits, schools, and school districts. Before joining the foundation, she served as chief program officer for Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional organization for educators, and worked for Hartford Public Schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, and the Kansas City Missouri School District. NMEF expects Dr. Ngounou to remain in the interim role for six to twelve months as it pauses its external search for Donohue's successor and decides on next steps around the future leadership of the organization.

Following the departure of Wes Moore as CEO earlier this month, New York City-based Robin Hood has announced DEREK FERGUSON as interim CEO. Prior to joining the organization in 2017, Ferguson, who had been serving as chief operating officer, was chief operating officer at Revolt Media & TV and chief growth officer at Combs Enterprises. Before joining Combs, he served as vice president of finance and operations for BMG Special Products, a division of BMG Entertainment; was a manager at Bain and Company; and was an auditor and mergers and acquisitions analyst at Coopers and Lybrand. Born and raised in the Bronx, Ferguson is a 1990 graduate of Harvard Business School and a 1985 graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

And PND notes the passing, on May 18 at the age of 81, of WILLIAM C. RICHARDSON, retired president and chief executive officer of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, former co-trustee of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Trust, and a board member of the Kellogg Company. During his tenure as president and CEO of the foundation, Richardson built on its pursuit of diversity and racial equity and brought a more policy-focused lens to it work. In a 2001 interview in preparation for the foundation's seventy-fifth anniversary in 2005, over which he presided, Dr. Richardson said he saw policy as one of many strategies for sustainability and magnifying the foundation's impact and highlighted the foundation's history of policy work, including W.K. Kellogg's effort to create consolidated school districts to provide more equitable education to children in rural areas. Before joining WKKF, Richardson served as president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he was a professor of health policy and management and later was appointed professor and president emeritus. Prior to that, he served as executive vice president and provost of the Pennsylvania State University and as dean of the graduate school and vice provost for research of the University of Washington in Seattle.