The Robin Hood Foundation has announced the appointment of REYNOLD LEVY as president, a new position. Levy, who stepped down as president of Lincoln Center in 2013 after eleven years, had said he would not pursue another full-time position. But the mission of the Robin Hood Foundation, its track record, and its potential to achieve even greater impact convinced him to change his mind. "To help the city's disadvantaged to experience lives of self-reliance, dignity, and opportunity is a privilege," said Levy. "No calling is more vital. No work is more important."

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, the Pittsburgh-based operating foundation that awards the Carnegie Medal for civilian heroism, has announced the election of EVAN S. FRAZIER and ERIC P. ZAHREN to its board. Frazier is senior vice president of community affairs for Highmark Health, where he oversees corporate giving, sponsorships, community programs, employee volunteerism, and the Highmark Foundation. Zahren, a U.S. Secret Service special agent for more than twenty-four years, is a member of the Pittsburgh advisory committee of the Jefferson Awards Foundation.

The New Cities Foundation in New York City has announced the appointment of MAXWELL L. ANDERSON as director of grant programs. Anderson, who headed the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1998 to 2003, returns to New York after serving as director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. A former NCF trustee, Anderson aims in his new position to develop ways to support NCF'S focus on urban innovation, with a particular emphasis on how digital platforms can improve the lives of city dwellers around the globe.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has announced the hiring of SARAH MURRAY and DONDRE YOUNG as program assistants in its environment program. Murray, who holds a master's degree in urban and regional planning from Michigan State University, where she conducted research on food systems in the developing world, will assist with international grantmaking, while Young, who has served as a policy assistant for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, will focus primarily on grantmaking in the U.S.

Duke Energy has announced the retirement of its top philanthropy executive, vice president RICHARD "STICK" WILLIAMS, at the end of the year. Williams oversees the Duke Energy Foundation — which in 2014 donated $26.5 million to nonprofit organizations and educational institutions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky — as well as the company's community activities. He is a former board chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and current co-chair of Project LIFT, a $55 million initiative to improve educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged students in west Charlotte, North Carolina.

The New York State Health Foundation has announced that founding president and CEO JAMES R. KNICKMAN plans to step down in the first half of 2016. Knickman, who became the foundation's first employee in 2006, will join the faculty of New York University. A search for his successor is under way.

In other news, RICHARD E. RAINWATER, billionaire investor, part owner of the Texas Rangers, and founder of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, has died at the age of 71. According to the foundation, Rainwater, who had been battling progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disease, since 2009, had given more than $265 million for the benefit of higher education, at-risk children, and research into degenerative neurological diseases. The son of a North Texas grocer, Rainwater graduated from Stanford Business School and worked at Goldman Sachs before joining Bass Enterprises to manage the fortune left by Texas oil wildcatter Sid Richardson, leading the acquisition of a major stake in the Walt Disney Co. He later became an independent investor and partnered with George W. Bush to buy the Rangers. Founded in 1991, his foundation has supported more than four hundred nonprofits working to improve the lives of children born into poverty in the United States.

PND also notes the passing of CAROLYN A. LYNCH, co-founder, president, and board chair of the Lynch Foundation, at the age of 69, from complications following a recent onset of acute myeloid leukemia. Born Carolyn Ann Hoff, Lynch studied physics and physiology at the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship and worked as a physical therapist, helping children with cystic fibrosis and cerebral palsy and veterans who had undergone amputations. With her husband, Peter, who managed the Fidelity Magellan Fund into a $14 billion portfolio before retiring in his mid-forties, she established the foundation in 1988 and focused her philanthropic efforts on education, health care, medical research, culture, and religion.