Building Resilient Nonprofit Organizations January 28, 2004  The Nonprofit Forums Unleashing the Power of Nonprofits June 30, 2004  Governance as Leadership December 15, 2004  Linking Money to Mission June 1, 2005 Managing for Mission April 26, 2006

The Nonprofit Forums:
Building Resilient Nonprofit Organizations

Speaker Biographies

Paul S. Grogan

President and CEO,
The Boston Foundation

Paul S. Grogan became the President and CEO of the Boston Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations, on July 1, 2001.   With an endowment of more than $630 million, the Foundation distributed grants of almost $50 million to nonprofit organizations throughout the Greater Boston community this past year.  The Foundation’s grantmaking is designed to respond to the critical challenges of our constantly changing community by supporting high-impact, innovative programs. 

Grogan joined the Foundation from Harvard University, where he served as Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs from 1999 to 2001.  He was also a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School.  From 1986 through 1998 he was President and CEO of the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the nation’s largest community development intermediary.  In Mr. Grogan’s term as president, LISC raised and invested more than $3 billion of private capital in inner city revitalization efforts across America, all channeled through local nonprofit community development corporations. Before joining LISC, Mr. Grogan served Boston Mayors Kevin H. White and Raymond L. Flynn in a variety of staff and line positions.  He headed Boston’s Neighborhood Development and Employment Agency in the early 80s, where he pioneered a series of public/private ventures that have been widely emulated by other cities.  These included the Boston Housing Partnership, which steers private dollars into the financing of affordable housing, and the Boston Compact, a partnership between the city’s corporate community and public school system.

A graduate in American History from Williams College in 1972, Paul Grogan earned a Masters degree in Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1979.  He is a trustee of Williams College, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the for profit company, the Community Development Trust, which he chairs.  Mr. Grogan is also a fellow at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing. Paul Grogan’s vision for the future of the American city is detailed in a book he wrote with Tony Proscio, called  “Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival,” published in October 2000 by Westview Press, which Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times has written is “arguably the most important book about cities in a generation.”

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Dr. Lester M. Salamon

Director of the Center for Civil Society Studies,
Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies 

Lester M. Salamon is a Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies.  He previously served as Director of the Center for Governance and Management Research at The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. and as Deputy Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. Before that, he taught at Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and, during the American civil rights struggle of the mid-1960s, at Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi.

Dr. Salamon was a pioneer in the empirical study of the nonprofit sector in the United States and, more recently, throughout the world.  His 1982 book, The Federal Budget and the Nonprofit Sector, was the first to document the scale of the American nonprofit sector and the extent of government support to it. His book Partners in Public Service: Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), which examines government-nonprofit relations in the United States, won the 1996 ARNOVA Book Award. As director of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, Dr. Salamon has extended this analysis to the international sphere, producing the first comparative empirical assessment ever undertaken of the size, structure, financing, and role of the nonprofit sector at the global level. The results of this work have been published in Dr. Salamon’s 1994 book, The Emerging Sector (Manchester University Press), in his more recent volume, Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Johns Hopkins University, 1999), and in an entire series of books on the international nonprofit sector published by Manchester University Press. Dr. Salamon is also the author of America’s Nonprofit Sector: A Primer, which is used widely in college-level courses on the nonprofit sector in the United States and elsewhere, and The State of Nonprofit America recently published by the Brookings Institution Press.

Dr. Salamon received his B.A. degree in Economics and Policy Studies from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. He is married, has two sons, and serves on the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, on the Boards of the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations and the Chesapeake Community Foundation, and on the Editorial Boards of Voluntas, Administration and Society, Society, Public Administration Review, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Rob Hollister

Dean, University College of Citizenship and Public Service,
Tufts University

Robert M. Hollister is the dean of the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, and the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service. Previously, Dr. Hollister was dean of the Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and director of the Lincoln Filene Center for Citizenship and Public Affairs. A specialist in nonprofit organizations and public policy, he has been engaged in teaching graduate and undergraduate students, practicing professionals, and citizens for over thirty years. He leads a spring term course and public forum on Leadership for Active Citizenship, and is writing a book on this topic. For the past twenty years he has directed the Carol R. Goldberg seminar, an action planning initiative co-sponsored by the Boston Foundation that convenes leaders from business, nonprofits, and government to address community problems in the Boston area. Dr. Hollister is co-editor and contributing author of several books, including Governing, Leading and Managing Nonprofit Organizations; Cities of the Mind; Neighborhood Policy and Planning and Neighborhood Health Center, and co-author of Development Politics.

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Lyndia Downie

Executive Director,
Pine Street Inn

Pine Street Inn President Lyndia Downie has been steadfastly committed to Boston’s homeless population for two decades.  During her twenty-year tenure at inn, Lydia has fulfilled many critical roles at Pine Street, including volunteer coordinator, director of the men’s shelter, and vice president of the inn and now is at the helm of New England’s largest resource for homeless men and women, serving 1,200 people each day.

As president, Downie oversees the daily operations of the inn’s outreach, shelter, job training, and permanent housing programs; supports the work of the inn’s Board of Directors, and its Board of Overseers; and builds relationships with state and local legislators, business leaders, and major donors¾ in order to meet the needs of Pine Street Inn’s guests.  Downie continues to critically evaluate Pine Street’s work.  The transformation she has led at Pine Street has created partnerships with other non-profits to facilitate the work and she has emphasized a concentration on core services at the inn.  Beyond emergency shelter, for which the inn is best known, Pine Street programs include basic and specialized skills training and affordable housing developments which provide permanent residences to more than 300 individuals and families.

With a keen understanding of the complex causes of homelessness and proven methods to combat it, Downie continues to successfully involve and build partnerships with social service agencies, state legislators and business leaders in the fight to end homelessness.  Downie is a member of the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers Board of Directors and the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Corporation of Massachusetts Board of Directors.  In 2002, Downie was appointed to Governor Romney’s Transportation and Housing Transition Team to help the administration develop sustainable means of combating homelessness.  Other appointments include the Supreme Judicial Court Committee on Substance Abuse, the Kresge Foundation Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee and the University of Vermont Regional Board.

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Bill Walczak

CEO and Executive Director,
Codman Square Health Center

Bill is most associated with the Codman Square Health Center, a multi‑service center which he co‑founded in the 1970s, and has been CEO since 1980.  The Health Center has become a major provider of medical and other clinical services, and a provider of community services including job training, civic health, education, youth and other services. The Health Center serves over 20,000 individuals, has over 130,000 annual visits, with 270 employees and a budget of $14 million.  Bill is also founding president of Codman Academy Charter School, a high school located on the health center campus.  The Health Center is considered a national and even international model of a NGO which uses the medical system as a platform for community regeneration.  In this capacity, Bill also works on international programs in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Vietnam. 

Bill has also been past president of the Codman Square Neighborhood Council and Columbia‑Savin Hill Civic Association.  He currently serves as President of Boston HealthNet, a network of 15 community health centers with Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine, and chairman of the Health Services Partnership of Dorchester. He is an overseer of Boston Medical Center, and is on the boards of STRIVE and Columbia Point Community Partnership.  He served on the Boston Park Commission, on the Mayor’s Welfare Reform Commission, and was a board member of Boston 2000, the City’s effort to celebrate the start of the new millennium. He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board of the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University. 

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Joan Wallace-Benjamin, PhD.

President and CEO,
Home for Little Wanderers

In February 2003, Joan assumed leadership of The Home for Little Wanderers, New England’s largest child welfare agency and one of the nation’s oldest with a history dating back to 1799.  As the former President & Chief Executive Officer of The Urban League of Massachusetts for eleven years from (l989 – 2000), the Director of Operations for Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston; Deputy Director of ABCD Head Start; and a Research Analyst for ABT Associates, she brings to this position a remarkable array of skills that will empower The Home to fulfill its mission of prevention, expert clinical care, outcomes research, and advocacy. 

Joan has received awards too numerous to list.  A sampling includes a 2003 Lady Baden-Powel Good Scout Award from Boston Minuteman Council, Boy Scouts of America, a 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award from Rosie’s Place, Boston, and named by Boston Magazine, May 2003 edition, as one of Boston’s 100 Women of Power.  In 2002 Joan was honored with Academy of Women Achiever’s Award from Boston YWCA; a Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice; an African American Achievement Award in Community Service from Mayor Menino; and the 25th Anniversary Child Care Award, from Family Day Care Program, Inc.

Joan graduated from Wellesley College with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.  She received her Ph.D. from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University; and holds an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Most recently Joan was a consultant with Whitehead Mann, a global executive recruiting firm.

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Claudio Martinez

Executive Director,
Hyde Square Task Force

Claudio Martinez is a long-time resident and activist in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.  Throughout the 1990’s he served for many years as President of the Board of Directors of the Hyde Square Task Force, a neighborhood-based organization in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Hyde/Jackson Square in Jamaica Plain, that provides educational, arts, leadership and community organizing initiatives for youth and adults in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury.

Claudio has worked for several years in the private sector, and began working in the non-profit sector in 1996.  He was the Director of Community Organizing at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation for two years, and in 1998 he became the Executive Director of the Hyde Square Task Force. Under his leadership, the Hyde Square Task Force has received many awards including the 1999 City Excellence Award in the category of “Innovations in Education” from the Boston Management Consortium for its collaboration with the Kennedy Elementary School, and the “Re-inventing Democracy” Progressive Leadership Award from the Commonwealth Coalition. The Task Force has also been credited with reducing the violent crime rate in Hyde/Jackson Square neighborhood and has been recognized nationally for its successful youth organizing initiatives, its community development work with residents and local businesses, and its success in greatly increasing the percentage of voter turnout in elections. 

Claudio presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative and is the Co-chair of the citywide Boston Parents Organizing Network. He is also a member of the Boston Foundation Education Advisory Committee and the Board of Advisors of The Home for Little Wanderers. Recently, the Boston Jaycees named Claudio one of their “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders”. 

Back to Top               Back to Homepage 

Geeta Pradhan

Director, New Economy Initiative,
The Boston Foundation

Geeta Pradhan is Director of the New Economy Initiative at the Boston Foundation and co-developer of the Boston Indicators Project.  She co-authored the 2000 and 2002 Boston Indicators reports: The Wisdom of Our Choices and Creativity and Innovation: A Bridge to the Future.  At the Boston Foundation, Geeta also developed and launched The New Economy Initiative — a special 5-year effort that uses networking, constituency building and grant making to reduce the digital divide and to empower young people, adults and nonprofit organizations to compete effectively in the 21st century.

She has worked in the field of community development, public policy, environment and urban design for over sixteen years.  Prior to joining the Boston Foundation, Geeta worked with the City of Boston.  From 1987 –1994 as Assistant Director at the Department of Neighborhood Development and from 1994–2000, as Director of Sustainable Boston.  Geeta received her undergraduate degree in architecture from New Delhi, India, and her graduate degree in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She serves on several nonprofit boards including the national Technology Funders Collaborative.  She has written and presented on issues of the environmental justice, sustainable development, indicators for social change, nonprofit capacity building, and the future of cities, and has won several awards for her work in urban communities.

Back to Top               Back to Homepage