LAFF Society

LAFF PARADE

News About Former Ford Foundation Staff

 

Andrea Taylor, who was director of the Foundation’s Media Program from 1988 to 1997 and most recently was an executive with Microsoft, has been named president and CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala.
 
“The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is among the world’s most iconic and important civil and human rights organizations,” she said. “Inclusive outreach worldwide is vital in 2015 and beyond. I’m eager to harness and leverage technology to engage broader audiences. 
 
“Every generation in society grapples with civil and human rights as a critical community priority.” 
 
Taylor had been Director of Citizenship and Public Affairs, North America for Microsoft from 2006 to 2014. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foundations and an adjunct professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
 
She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University and was elected to the school’s Board of Trustees in 2009, where she chairs its Academic Affairs Committee. The university honored her in 2008 with its Distinguished Alumni Award. 
 
Radhika Balakrishnan and Mallika Dutt have been named to a new Commission on Gender Equity in New York City, established earlier this year by Mayor Bill de Blasio “to achieve economic mobility and social inclusion of all New Yorkers, particularly women and girls, and ensure their public safety”. It replaces the city’s Commission on Women’s Issues, which had been created in 2002.
 
The commission, among other work, will advise the mayor on “initiatives and methods to achieve the goals of the mayor’s platform to reduce inequality, with a focus on gender-based inequality”; advocate for women, girls, transgender and inter-sex residents; support programs that remove barriers to full participation by women in their personal and work lives; study the nature and effects of intentional and unintentional discrimination against women, and recommend legislative and executive action to improve the lives of women.
 
Said the mayor, “New York City is a city spiritually defined by inclusion and diversity, and it’s imperative that all New Yorkers, regardless of sex, gender or sexual orientation, are treated equally”. 
 
Balakrishnan is the executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, which is part of Rutgers University in New Jersey. She worked for the Foundation from 1992 to 1995 in its Asia and Pacific program.
 
“Gender equality and equity have been the focus of my academic and activist life for over thirty years,” she said. “I am honored to serve on a commission that that will champion gender equity in public policy in the city that I love and call my home.”
 
Dutt is the founder, president and CEO of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization whose mission is “to build a world in which violence against women and girls is unacceptable and all people enjoy their human rights.” She worked in the Foundation’s New Delhi office from 1996 to 2000.
 
“I am honored and humbled to join this historic group of esteemed leaders who can help New York City become a place where all people enjoy their human rights and live with equality, dignity and justice”. she said. “Locally and globally, we stand at a tipping point where deep culture change is within our grasp, and I believe New York can lead the way.” 
 
Wayne Winborne is the new executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS), described as the “largest and most comprehensive library and archive of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world.”
 
The institute, founded in 1952 and now located in Newark, N.J., as part of Rutgers University, has a collection that includes “extensive and rare recordings, publications, instruments and artifacts of jazz history”. It is the “designated repository” for the archives of many jazz figures, including Benny Carter and Mary Lou Williams. 
 
“I can’t wait to get started,” said Winborne, a former Ford program officer. “There is so much to build upon: the IJS’s phenomenal holdings, experienced and committed staff, rich history, the intellectual resources of the university and the good will among so many collaborators across Newark, the New York metro area and the jazz world.”
 
For the last five years Winborne has headed his own firm, the Winborne Group, a consulting company that specializes in business development, strategic planning, fundraising, diversity, multicultural marketing and program design and facilitation.
 
He had previously been vice president for business diversity outreach at Prudential Financial in Newark, director of program and policy research at the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), senior research coordinator at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College and an adjunct lecturer in psychology and research methods at New York University and the City University of New York’s Baruch College.
 
He has an extensive background in jazz, having worked as an adviser and consultant to artists and musicians as well as filmmakers, playwrights and theater producers. He has produced recordings for the MaxJazz, HighNote and Savant labels, and taught jazz history and appreciation at Stanford University. 
 
Michael Seltzer now is the director of The New York Community Trust Leadership Fellows program, which trains and mentors individuals “to fill a leadership void left by retiring executives of nonprofits…to ensure tomorrow’s nonprofits have the leadership to flourish as they help New Yorkers”. 
 
The program, created with Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs, its Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management, and its Office of Executive Programs, offers an 18-week professional certificate program that includes learning seminars with college faculty and practitioners, a curriculum “taught through the lens of real-world issues and trends”, projects related to the fellow’s organization and its challenges, and opportunities to meet with and be mentored by professionals in the nonprofit world and government.
 
Seltzer, a member of the executive committee of The LAFF Society, is a Distinguished Lecturer at the Baruch School of Public Affairs. He has also been president of Philanthropy New York and a program officer at Ford responsible for its work in strengthening the nonprofit sector and promoting organized philanthropy worldwide. 

 

 

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