2011 NFG Board of Directors

Board members are elected by vote of the membership at NFG annual meetings, and can serve two consecutive three-year terms.

Co-Chair: Kevin Ryan, The New York Foundation
Co-Chair: Molly Schultz Hafid, Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock
Treasurer: Cheryl Fitzgerald, Fannie Mae

Commitees

• Executive Committee
• Audit Committee
• Finance Committee
• Fundraising Committee
• Membership Committee
• Strategic Programs Committee

David Beckwith

Dave Beckwith is the Executive Director of The Needmor Fund, a national foundation based in Toledo, Ohio. He was formerly a Field Consultant for the Washington, DC based Center for Community Change. He has worked as a community organizer, trainer and consultant to community groups since 1971. He was the founding Director of the New England Training Center for Community Organizers in Providence, RI; Field Coordinator for the Governance Task Force of President Carter's National Commission on Neighborhoods in 1978; a Training Specialist with the national Legal Services Corporation in Washington, DC; and moved to Toledo in 1981 as the Director of the East Toledo Community Organization. From January of 1988 until September of 1994, he worked part time as a Research Associate at the University of Toledo's Urban Affairs Center.

back to top

Angela Brown is Director of Programs for the Hyams Foundation. She serves as the staff liaison to its Program Committee, facilitating the committee’s program development and oversight work. Her work has included structuring the Foundation’s $1 million program - related investment (PRI) to the $22 million Massachusetts Neighborhood Stabilization Loan Fund, stabilizing neighborhoods that hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis, oversight of its $3 million PRI to Home Funders and development of an accompanying policy agenda -- an initiative that is half-way to its goal of creating 1,000 permanent housing units for formerly homeless families in Massachusetts—and, assisting in The Foundation’s recent allocations of substantial mission-investment from within its fixed-income and cash asset-classes and in accordance with its asset allocation policy. She represents the Foundation at the local smart growth funder roundtable to link transit-oriented development, transit equity organizing and regional equity. Hyams’s major goals are to increase civic engagement within communities of color; increase the long-term success of teens of color; and, to increase access to affordable housing for low income households.

Previously, she was a manager with the Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development (New England) and the national office of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (NY). She is a founding board member of New England Blacks in Philanthropy, the AGM Diversity Fellows Program, and a number of other local funder collaboratives. She holds an AB from the University of Massachusetts and an MPP from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

back to top

Ed Egnatios

Edward S. Egnatios is a Senior Program Officer at the Skillman Foundation and responsible for coordination of the Foundation’s Good Neighborhoods work.  Prior to his joining the team at the Skillman Foundation, he has executive management experience in both the for-profit business and in the nonprofit sectors.  Serving most recently as the President/CEO of EK & Associates LLC, a consulting firm, Egnatios has held leadership positions with O/E Learning Inc. as National Executive Director of the UAW-Ford Family Service and Learning Centers; with United Way Community Services in Detroit as Vice President, Volunteer Services, Communications & Marketing; with United Community Services of Metropolitan Detroit as Executive Vice President; with Dobbs Furniture, Inc as Vice President of Human Resources and Operations; and with the Grosse Pointe Inter-Faith Center for Racial Justice as Executive Director. 

He received his BA from John Carroll University in Cleveland and his MSW in Community Practice from the University of Michigan. He is a graduate and presenter for Leadership Detroit, an active volunteer with youth at Think Detroit PAL, and a past
Adjunct Faculty member at Wayne State University School of Social Work and University of Michigan School of Social Work.

Born and raised in Detroit, he is the son of Arab American and Latino immigrants, married and the father of four daughters.

Charles Fields

Charles Fields, M.A., joined the California Endowment as a senior program officer for South Los Angeles for the foundation’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities: California Living 2.0 initiative. Under the Endowment’s 2010-2020 strategic plan, Building Healthy Communities:  California Living 2.0, Fields is responsible for grant making and related activities in Los Angeles County, with a special focus on the foundation’s place-based efforts in Central Long Beach, Boyle Heights and the South Figueroa Corridor/Vermont-Manchester area of South Los Angeles.

As a grant maker at the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Fields managed a $29 million portfolio of grants focused on community economic development, civic engagement, educational equity, and family support. In addition to his grant making, Fields co-designed and facilitated town halls throughout California on multiple issues, and provided planning and implementation support for the foundation’s convention for the Equal Voice for America’s Family’s Campaign.

Prior to his service with the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Fields was an Initiative Coordinator and Neighborhood and Community Development Fellow at the San Francisco Foundation where he provided day-to-day management of the West Oakland Initiative. Other positions of note include Social Action and Policy Coordinator for The National Community Building Network in Oakland, California; Empowerment Zone Coordinator for the Transportation Resource Information Project in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Organizer and Economic Development Specialist for Welcome House (Northern Kentucky Welfare Reform Task Force) in Covington, Kentucky.

His commitment to community is exemplified by his board service and membership with a number of organizations, including the Neighborhood Funders Group (board member), the Edward W. Hazen Foundation (Trustee), Social Justice Infrastructure Funders (member), and the Association of Black Foundation Executives Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program (member).

Fields earned both his B.A. in Organizational Communications and his M.A. in Education from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

back to top

Cheryl Fitzgerald, Treasurer

Cheryl Fitzgerald is currently Managing Director of Fannie Mae’s National Initiatives team. In this capacity, she is responsible for management of Fannie Mae's Alliance Partnership, which is comprised of 16 national organizations that are working together to achieve systemic change that contributes to increases in the production and preservation of affordable housing across the country. Her responsibilities also include managing relationships with national intermediaries, other national organizations, and Fannie Mae's three Regional giving offices and regional relationships.

Prior to assuming her current role, Ms. Fitzgerald was responsible for management of the Fannie Mae Foundation’s Capital for Communities initiative, which focused on identifying barriers to the free flow of capital in underserved communities across the country, and development of products and services to effectively minimize or eliminate these barriers. Ms. Fitzgerald also oversaw the Foundation’s Community and Neighborhood Development Fund, a $35 million housing and community development loan fund dedicated to promoting the construction and preservation of affordable homeownership and housing opportunities. She was responsible for the overall risk exposure of the portfolio and was actively involved in the development of innovative new products to meet the needs of community development organizations.

Prior to joining the Fannie Mae Foundation, Ms Fitzgerald worked for more than ten years as a corporate and real estate banker, most recently as vice president, Real Estate Structured Debt, for Bank of America, where she provided structured finance products for large publicly held real estate corporations and real estate investment trusts. She additionally held national offices in the Urban Financial Services Coalition (f/k/a National Association of Urban Bankers), a trade association of minority financial services professionals. Ms. Fitzgerald ultimately served as president of the organization’s nonprofit foundation, which provides scholarships to financially disadvantaged and educationally excelling youth. She currently serves on the CARS Advisory Board and the PRI Makers Network Steering Committee.

Ms. Fitzgerald received her BBA in Finance from Texas A&M University and her MBA from the University of Texas.

Karen FitzGerald

Karen FitzGerald is a Senior Program Officer at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation in Washington DC. Since 1944, Meyer has been investing in community-based nonprofit organizations in the DC metropolitan area. She is responsible for the Meyer Foundation's grants for housing and community development, homelessness, and civic engagement. She also co-chairs the Washington Grantmakers’ Sustainable Communities Working Group, one of whose goal is to increase philanthropic investment in the eastern part of the Washington DC metropolitan area. She earned a BA from Tufts University and an MBA from Yale University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband and two sons.

Solomon Greene

Solomon Greene is a Senior Program Officer at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), where he manages the Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative, a strategic grantmaking program to mitigate the impacts of the national foreclosure crisis on low-income communities and communities of color.  He also serves in the foundation’s Equality and Opportunity Fund, which provides support to advance immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ equality, and gender justice.  Prior to joining the OSF, Greene served as a Law Fellow at New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, where his research focused on foreclosure law and strategies to promote affordable homeownership and increase credit access for underserved borrowers.  While at NYU, he also co-taught a graduate colloquium on critical issues in contemporary urban policy. Greene continues to serve as an adjunct professor at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where he teaches land use law.  He has published on such diverse topics as comparative welfare reform, the history of juvenile courts, and forced evictions in squatter communities.

Greene received a BA with highest honors and distinction from Stanford University, a master of city planning degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a JD from Yale Law School, where he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.  After law school, Greene clerked for Hon. Dorothy W. Nelson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and served as a litigation associate at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles. He has served as a law clerk at the Federal Trade Commission and a human rights fellow at the World Bank Institute, where he developed a set of best practices for legal titling of informal housing in developing countries.  Prior to pursuing his graduate degrees, Greene held leadership positions within several community development and affordable housing organizations, including the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing, Mission Housing Development Corporation, and Hearth Homes Community Building.

back to top

James W. Head

James Head is Director of Programs at the San Francisco Foundation and has over 25 years of experience in the field of community and economic development. Mr. Head served as President of the National Economic Development and Law Center for 17 years before coming to the Foundation. A lawyer by training, Mr. Head has significant nonprofit management, programmatic, and legal experience and has worked on nonprofit legal issues, nonprofit finance issues, as a consultant to foundations, business, government, and as a professor of law.

As Director of Programs, Mr. Head is responsible for guiding a broad range of program areas and sustaining the vitality of the Foundation’s community grantmaking. His past affiliations and community service include Legal Counsel of the California Community Economic Development Association, the Community Advisory Board of Union Bank of California, as a member and past Board President of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, and the Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundation of New York. He also previously served as an advisor to the 2001 Race Commission in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a member of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Board, and was a founding board member of the California Community Economic Development Lending Initiative. Mr. Head holds a bachelors degree from the University of Georgia and a law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law. He holds state bar memberships in Georgia, Florida, and California.

The San Francisco Foundation is a regional Community Foundation serving five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is a leading agent of Bay Area philanthropy and ranks seventh nationally in grantmaking and assets among community foundation. Areas of focus include Arts and Culture, Education, Environment, Community Health, Community Development, and Social Justice.

Sarah Hernandez

Sarah Hernandez is a Program Officer at the McKnight Foundation working within the foundation’s Region and Communities program area. The program encourages efficient development in the Twin Cities region that creates livable communities and opportunities for all to thrive. Hernandez oversees the Healthy Communities portfolio. Over time Hernandez has served on several advisory boards and committees of area nonprofits including the Corporation for Supportive Housing, Twin Cities LISC; Nexus Community Partners, and Minnesota Green Communities.

Prior to McKnight, Hernandez worked in corporate government and community affairs with the Honeywell Corporation in Minneapolis. She started at Honeywell as a legislative and policy analyst, and later managed the energy and environmental policy program, the volunteer program, and the community affairs program. In 1998, she was named senior manager of corporate community affairs. During her 13-year tenure, Hernandez helped organize the global distribution of Honeywell’s funds to educational and environmental nonprofit organizations. Hernandez earned a B.A. in Sociology at the University of Minnesota and holds a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Founded in 1953 and endowed by William L. McKnight and Maude L. McKnight, the Minnesota-based family foundation, seeks to improve the quality of life for present and future generations. Mr. McKnight was one of the early leaders of the 3M Company, although the Foundation is independent of 3M.  Through grantmaking, coalition-building, and encouragement of strategic policy reform, the McKnight Foundation uses its resources to attend, unite, and empower those it serves. The Foundation had assets of approximately $1.9 billion and granted about $99 million in 2009.

back to top

Jerry Maldonado

Jerry Maldonado is a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation.  In this position, Jerry helps manage the foundation's investments in affordable housing, regional economic development, and planning and land use innovation in metropolitan regions across the country. His grant making concentrates on integrated regional strategies for building stronger communities by improving access for low-income families to permanently affordable housing, reducing blight, improving transit choices and strengthening decent work opportunities.

Jerry joined the Ford Foundation in 2008 as a program manager overseeing the foundation’s post-Katrina Gulf Coast Transformation efforts.

Previously, he was a visiting scholar at Cornell University's Global Labor Institute and co-director of the Carnegie Council's Global Policy Innovations program. Jerry has also served as a consultant with numerous international development and philanthropic institutions, including the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He has organized several international development conferences and symposia on issues ranging from globalization and inequality to human rights and economic development, and is a co-author of the 2005 report, "The Americas at a Crossroads: Putting Decent Work Back on the International Development Agenda."

Jerry has a master's degree in public policy and international affairs from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where he concentrated in international relations with a minor in urban studies.

Christopher Perez

Christopher Perez serves as a Program Officer at the Rasmuson Foundation with a primary focus on grants and program-related investments in the area of community and economic development. Immediately prior to joining the Foundation in June 2008, he served as a senior program officer for the F. B. Heron Foundation, located in New York City, managing a diverse portfolio of grants and investments with an emphasis on rural communities. His prior philanthropy experience includes positions in the corporate philanthropy department of Pfizer Inc, serving as a program officer for the Pfizer Foundation, and as a graduate intern at the William Randolph Hearst Foundations. Previously, he held positions with New York City and New York State governments focusing on urban development.

Chris holds a M.P.A. in nonprofit management and finance from New York University and a B.A. in history and art history from Wesleyan University. Chris has been active in the leadership of several national philanthropic organizations, such as the National Rural Funders' Collaborative. Prior to moving to Alaska, Chris served as the treasurer of the board of Sustainable Long Island, a nonprofit, community revitalization organization promoting economic development, social equity, and a healthy environment for local residents. He is looking forward to exploring his new home state and getting to know its people.

Kevin Ryan, Co-Chair 

Kevin Ryan is a Program Officer at the New York Foundation. He manages a portfolio of active grants for start up organizations that focus on community organizing and advocacy. Kevin also oversees the Foundation’s Technical Assistance Program that includes workshops, small grants and individual technical assistance requests. Prior to his work at the New York Foundation, Kevin was the Executive Director of Community Training and Resource Center, a housing preservation organization. He provided leadership to a staff of seasoned organizers working to improve housing conditions for low-income New York City renters. Kevin is a graduate of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and received a Masters of Urban Planning degree from the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Molly Schultz Hafid, Co-Chair

Molly Schultz Hafid works as a Program Officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, where she is responsible for the Democratic Participation, Civil and Constitutional Rights and Community Organizing program areas.   Prior to the Veatch Program, she worked as the Director of Grantmaking Programs at the Jewish Funds for Justice, a progressive social justice foundation committed to combating the root causes of economic and social injustice.  She managed a portfolio that included grantmaking to community organizing and advocacy groups, redevelopment and recovery grants in the Gulf Coast region (following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation (a Ford Foundation initiative), and management of the individual donor-advised fund program.  Molly has also worked as a Program Manager of Strategic Partnerships at the Jewish Funders Network and as the Acting Deputy Director of the North Star Fund, a progressive foundation in New York City.  She has held positions as a director, grantmaker, and development professional for nonprofit organizations in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Vermont, and Ohio. 

Ms. Hafid has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and Literature from Antioch College in Ohio and a Masters of Public Administration with a specialization in International Nonprofit Management from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.  Ms. Hafid’s research interest is the role of charitable capital flows in building civil society in the Middle East and North Africa. She recently completed a research fellowship with the John D. Gerhardt Center on Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo.

 Nathaniel Chioke Williams, Ph.D.

As Executive Director, Nat Chioke Williams leads the Hill-Snowdon Foundation in its philanthropic and programmatic work, operations and partnerships within the community. In 2004 and 2005, Nat managed the Foundation’s Economic Justice Program and Fund for DC program. Going forward, Nat will have the primary responsibility for HSF’s Youth Organizing Program. Nat holds a B.A. in Psychology from Morehouse College, as well as a M.A. and Ph.D. in Community Psychology from New York University.

Nat’s funding experience has focused on community organizing and youth organizing, and his background includes research on the socio-political development of African American youth activists, social movements, social oppression and liberation psychology; tenant organizing and non-profit management consulting. He currently serves as the co-chair of the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing. Nat’s prior philanthropic work in youth and community organizing includes positions as Program Officer for Youth Development at the Edward Hazen Foundation and Program Officer for the New York Foundation. Additionally, Nat has served as Assistant Professor of Black Studies for the State University of New York at New Paltz, Senior Program Associate for Community Resource Exchange in New York City, and Director of Organizing for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board in New York City.