Executive Commentary
Read previous commentary by Gara LaMarche, President & CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies and Sherece West, President of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Our third featured field executive is Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).
This comment, completed with support from Diversity in Philanthropy Project consultant Robin Templeton, describes Dr. Hrabowski’s quest to ensure that the Marguerite Casey Foundation reflect the broad and deep diversity – in its board, staff, and grantmaking programs.
FREEMAN A. HRABOWSKI III
Freeman A. Hrabowski, III is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Widely recognized for advancing minority participation in science, mathematics and engineering, Dr. Hrabowski has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a recipient of both the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring and the Columbia University Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service. Fast Company magazine included Dr. Hrabowski in its inaugural list of “Fast 50 Champions of Innovation,” and U.S. News and World Report named UMBC an “educational powerhouse” under Dr. Hrabowski’s leadership. In addition to being a founding member and Chair of the Board of the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation, Dr. Hrabowski serves on the boards of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Constellation Energy Group, the Urban Institute, the France-Merrick Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Diversity was a core value and guiding priority of the Board of Directors that founded the Marguerite Casey Foundation in 2001. As the leadership group responsible for establishing and operationalizing the Foundation, we saw it as our responsibility to think seriously about diversity at every level of this philanthropic institution—from the communities we would serve through our grantmaking programs to the people we would hire to run the Foundation, to those who would be invited in the future to join our Board of Directors.
Reflecting our commitment to diversity, the Board conducted a rigorous search process and hired as our President an exceptional leader who is a woman of color with extensive experience working with diverse communities. President Luz Vega-Marquis in turn, was committed to recruiting people to the Foundation from wide-ranging backgrounds. As a result, today, when you walk into the Foundation’s office, you see people from many backgrounds and from all over the country who reflect a broad range of experiences, who are there because the leader we selected is deeply committed to diversity, and because we, as a Board, have a commitment to diversity, equity and excellence. This institutional commitment is reflected also in the language describing the Foundation’s aim “to reflect the diverse backgrounds and experiences of those we serve while bringing humility and hope to the work we do.”
Having the chance to hear different perspectives based on a diverse range of experiences is enormously helpful to an institution—philanthropic, educational or corporate—when it thinks about what it will be and whom it will serve. For the Marguerite Casey Foundation, our diversity helps to heighten our sensitivity and commitment to developing meaningful approaches to critical challenges facing children and families in our country. I’m particularly proud of the fact that the Foundation serves as a model in this regard and hope that other boards see diversity as necessary to informing policy development at all levels and achieving better results.
Boards can play a crucial role in emphasizing the importance of diversity as an institutional principle and goal. They can, for example, set a tone by proactively looking for prospective board members having diverse backgrounds. Networking is very important. You can do this by identifying people of color and others already on boards who have good judgment and can be helpful in identifying prospects. Most important, board members need to be good thinkers.
Much of my thinking about diversity—both as a matter of equity and as a means to achieve excellence—has been influenced by my experience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County wherewe have created an institutional atmosphere in which diversity and high achievement are mutually reinforcing. Our twenty-year old Meyerhoff Scholars Program for high-achieving minority students in science and engineering has become a national model. In fact, we are among the nation’s leading institutions in producing African American graduates who go on to complete Ph.D.s in these fields. Today when people see young black men walking across campus, they don’t first think, “There goes the basketball team.” Instead they are much more likely to comment, “Look, “there go members of the chemistry honor society."
My campus is demonstrating that diversity and excellence go hand-in-hand and portend America’s future, like the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
The interview that formed the basis of Dr. Hrabowski’s “Leader Commentary” was conducted by Robin Templeton for the Diversity in Philanthropy Project.