Friday, January 15, 2016
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Elects New Board Chair and Five Members to Its Board of Directors
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), one of the world’s leading nonprofit philanthropy services, announced today that five new members have been elected to its Board of Directors: Vice President of Parallax Energy Mac Broderick, President and CEO of College Future Foundations Julia Lopez, former Executive Director of The David Rockefeller Fund Marnie S. Pillsbury, Senior Policy Advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council Theo Spencer, and former Executive Director of the Van Leer Group Foundations Rien van Gendt. In addition, RPA's board named Steven Wayne, CEO of Jensen Group, a leading real estate private equity investment manager and developer based in St. Petersburg, Russia, as its new Board Chair.
“I am honored by the opportunity to help RPA advance its mission of helping donors create thoughtful, effective philanthropy,” Wayne said. “My fellow board members are global leaders whose diversity of expertise and deep commitment to the Rockefeller family’s legacy of effective giving will be instrumental to RPA’s continued innovation in philanthropy.”
“Mac, Julia, Marnie, Theo and Rien each bring unique new skills and ideas to our Board,” said Melissa Berman, President and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. “We are excited and grateful to leverage their expertise, as well as Steve’s guidance, to increase RPA’s presence and impact around the world.”
The five new members of RPA’s Board of Directors are:
- Mac Broderick: Mac is Vice President, Strategy, at Parallax Energy, a liquefied natural gas focused project developer based in Houston, Texas. He joined Parallax after working in JPMorgan’s energy investment banking division and at Triangle Petroleum, a Williston-basin focused exploration and production company. From 2005-2008, he worked for the Jensen Group, a leading real estate private equity manager and developer based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and co-founded an investment fund based in Kyiv, Ukraine before graduate school. He is a sixth-generation member of the Rockefeller family.
- Julia Lopez: A widely respected leader with broad and deep experience in philanthropy and government, Julia began serving as the President and CEO of College Futures Foundation in 2008. Before joining College Futures, she served as Senior Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Julia currently serves as a member of the Statewide Leadership Council of the Public Policy Institute of California and is a member of the board of KQED, a Northern California public media outlet.
- Marnie S. Pillsbury: Marnie is the former Executive Director of The David Rockefeller Fund and philanthropic advisor to Mr. Rockefeller. She is currently a Trustee and Vice Chair of The Rockefeller University and serves on the boards of the International Women's Health Coalition, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Pinkerton Foundation. She is also on the board of the Center for Curatorial Leadership and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
- Theo Spencer: Theo is a Senior Policy Advocate at the Natural Resource Defense Council. Since joining in 2001 with the creation of NRDC’s Climate Center, Theo has worked on a wide variety of climate, land and water issues, and has also helped manage NRDC’s urban climate preparedness initiative. As a former reporter at Fortune magazine, he has worked with the financial community to raise awareness about risks posed by climate change, and opportunities in clean energy investment. He is a fifth generation member of the Rockefeller family.
- Rien van Gendt: Rien retired in 2007 as Executive Director of the Van Leer Group Foundations in Amstelveen, Netherlands. He has held many leadership positions in both the public and private sectors over the course of his career, and serves on the supervisory/advisory boards of several foundations, nonprofit organizations and corporations in the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, UK and the United States. He chairs the board of the Dutch Association of Foundations/FIN, the Cooperating Dutch Philanthropic Organisations/SBF, is Vice Chair of the European Cultural Foundation and is Managing Director of Partex Oil and Gaz Holdings BV.
For a complete list of RPA’s current board members, please visit http://rockpa.org/board-of-directors.