{"id":4402231441611,"date":"2026-01-27T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philanthropy.com\/?p=4402231441611"},"modified":"2026-02-03T17:51:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T22:51:41","slug":"how-one-foundation-built-a-board-thats-standing-up-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philanthropy.com\/news\/how-one-foundation-built-a-board-thats-standing-up-to-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"How One Foundation Built a Board That’s Standing Up to Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Keep up with everything happening in <\/em>The Commons<\/em><\/a> by<\/em> signing up for our weekly newsletter.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy announced in early January<\/a> an overhaul of the recommended vaccine schedule for children, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued a pointed, even sarcastic response. \u201cSecretary Kennedy has said that people should not take medical advice from him,” declared CEO Richard Besser<\/a>, a pediatrician. \u201cThis announcement shows exactly why.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the first time that RWJF \u2014 one of the country\u2019s largest grant makers, with more than $13 billion in assets \u2014 has called out the Trump administration. Ever since the president returned to the White House last year, the health-focused foundation has stood as one of philanthropy\u2019s earliest and most consistent critics<\/a> of his agenda. Notably, even as some funders beat a quiet retreat from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs amid threats of federal investigations<\/a>, RWJF remained firmly committed to confronting structural racism as a barrier to quality health for Americans.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a public and defiant stance, the foundation says, stems in part from a wholesale change in its board and its trustee recruitment. For decades, the foundation had searched for trustees largely in the personal networks of board members, even keeping a binder of names. But beginning after Besser\u2019s arrival in 2017, it introduced a more formal trustee recruitment process that prioritized diversity across race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and more \u2014 a case study of how one mega-foundation aims to make its leadership look more like America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Over time, the original trustees all rotated off, each having completed the maximum 10 years of service. The foundation now seats a board that is significantly younger and more racially diverse than both its predecessors and its peers. Eleven of its 15 trustees are people of color; another is an Iranian-born immigrant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson is the first Black person to lead the board. Only three trustees hold Ivy League degrees, and several are in their 40s \u2014 a significant contrast to boards often filled with retirees and graduates of prestigious colleges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The RWJF board also includes several leaders of the foundation\u2019s grantees \u2014 another departure from philanthropy norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This overhaul, RWJF leaders say, has fundamentally altered how the grant maker assesses risk, power, and responsibility in what is now a hostile political climate for its mission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/strong>We\u2019ve got board members who are raising families, and they’re impacted by the [Trump administration efforts to] shut down the Department of Education,\u201d says Wilson, CEO of the Children\u2019s Defense Fund<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve got two board members who are working in health care, and they are impacted by the decimation of the public health care infrastructure in America, personally and professionally.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson is one of three board members who run organizations that receive RWJF grants. When Trump\u2019s policies and funding cuts imperiled groups working on racial health disparities, the board refused to back down, Besser says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those grantees, Besser says, help the foundation prioritize threats to the field rather than the dangers to its own well-being.\u201c<\/em>What I hear in the boardroom is: \u2018How can you be bolder?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elite and White<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Large foundations typically draw trustees from an elite and often racially homogenous slice of America. A 2017 Chronicle<\/em> analysis<\/a> found that white individuals held 72 percent of board seats at the 20 largest foundations. Nearly four in five had attended private colleges or universities, and 40 percent held Ivy League credentials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversity on many boards has increased modestly over the years, particularly following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and the national focus on racial discrimination. People of color now make up more than half of the Kresge<\/a>, MacArthur<\/a>, and Mellon<\/a> foundation boards, which were previously predominantly white. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the #MeToo, Black Live Matters, and related movements, \u201cit felt to many organizations like \u2018This is a moment, and we have to meet this moment,\u2019\u201d says Melissa Berman, former CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besser, a former senior official at the Centers for Disease Control, was a newcomer to philanthropy and board work when he arrived at RWJF.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the foundation\u2019s 15-member board was predominantly white and included several prestigious figures moving toward the twilight of their careers \u2014 a common trait of trustees at big foundations. The roster featured, among others, former U.S. Senator Bill Frist, ex-World Wildlife Fund CEO Kathryn Fuller, and retired Goldman Sachs executive Robert Litterman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe average age was in the 70s,\u201d Besser says. Half had attended Ivy League colleges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To change who sat at its board table, the foundation upended its recruitment and selection process. When Besser arrived, RWJF board searches aimed chiefly to replace the departing trustee\u2019s qualifications or expertise as a policy expert, for instance. The first stop in the search was \u201cthe book\u201d \u2014 a binder with names of potential candidates recommended largely via trustee personal networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Besser, the foundation hired a search firm to identify board candidates. Without such help, Besser says, \u201ca board will tend to replicate itself, because you only know who you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, RWJF instructs the firm to search for candidates who would help make up a board that\u2019s diverse in age, race, sexual orientation, geography, and more. The firm supplies a list of candidates to the board\u2019s nominating committee. Besser and other board members follow up with conversations that help gauge a candidate\u2019s commitment to tackling racism as a determinant of health disparities. Ultimately, the top criteria for board selection is alignment with RWJF\u2019s mission, Besser says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping New Board Members<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before Besser arrived, RWJF did not allow nonprofit leaders who directly control programs that received the foundation’s support to sit on the board \u2014 a common prohibition in foundations to avoid conflicts of interest. The foundation dropped that prohibition, however, to incorporate more on-the-ground perspective in its decision making.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cYou can <\/strong>bring someone in to talk to the board, but having people on the board who are living the reality of what so many people are experiencing across the country is very, very valuable,\u201d Besser says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three members of the Robert Wood Johnson board lead organizations that are foundation grantees: Edgar Villanueva, whose Decolonizing Wealth Project has been awarded $4.5 million by the foundation since 2020; the Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, a prominent Black faith leader whose Children\u2019s Defense Fund has received $7 million in that time; and Ryan Haygood, whose New Jersey Institute for Social Justice has been given $9.2 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation took steps to prevent conflicts of interest. If RWJF provides general operating support to a board member\u2019s organization, for instance, that funding cannot top 30 percent of the group’s revenue. Also, a foundation grant cannot go toward the compensation or benefits of an organization leader who also is an RWJF board member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was done really, really carefully and scrupulously,\u201d says Fuller, who rotated off the board in early 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson says the board rarely makes decisions about individual grants, but he recently recused himself for a vote on a portfolio from which his organization had previously been funded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unusual to bring on leaders of grassroots organizations because they often want trustees with previous board experience or specific skills in, say, board governance or finance, says Vincent Robinson, founder of the 360 Group<\/a>, an executive-search firm. \u201cThe question then becomes: If they don\u2019t have that experience, how do we ensure that they get it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Villanueva, a veteran of boards at several smaller organizations, gives the foundation high marks for a robust  onboarding and supportive mentorship, particularly when he\u2019s confronted unfamiliar governance, finance, and investment issues. \u201cThose are really hard skill sets even for me, a person who has three college degrees and a lot of experience in this sector,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson says the foundation has brought in consultants and facilitators to help the group create collaborative processes and a framework for conversation and a sense of community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Villanueva joined the board in 2022, it still featured several older prominent figures such as former U.S. Senator Bill Frist. Villanueva, who\u2019s an Indigenous American, says he hesitated to speak up; in the culture of his Lumbee tribe, the oldest members are considered elders whom the youngest must listen to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuller, then the board chair, noticed his reticence. The two talked, and she encouraged him to speak up and asked for his perspective in meetings. When he spoke, her eyes said to him, \u201cGo, Edgar,\u201d he remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat invitation and that cultural sensitivity made me a lot more comfortable to just to speak up,\u201d he says. \u201cNow they\u2019re probably tired of hearing me talk.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Getting There Faster’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The three grantees on the board are all nationally known social justice advocates. Villanueva, who\u2019s queer, leads the annual #PhilanthropySoWhite campaigns. Wilson was one of the leaders of the Black community in St. Louis following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown. At the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Haygood, a civil-rights lawyer, helped organize a coalition to advocate for state reparations for descendants of enslaved Black Americans<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of the three joined the board in 2022 or later. Another new board member, Azita Emami, dean of Yale\u2019s nursing school<\/a> and the architect of the first center for anti-racism in nursing<\/a> is also on the board.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/strong>There’s been more of an intention to bring on folks who are absolutely and clearly committed to the path that the foundation is on,\u201d Villanueva says. \u201cAnd we seem to be getting there faster as a result of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RWJF has always examined the role of race in health disparities, Besser says, but that work deepened with the racial reckoning following George Floyd\u2019s murder in 2020. The pandemic, he adds, also laid bare disparities in health care for communities of color as well as low-income and rural parts of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, while the board still included many of the trustees from Besser\u2019s first year, the foundation announced $90 million in grants<\/a> to organizations building \u201ccommunity power,\u201d including community racial-justice advocacy groups. Notably, RWJF is also pursuing one of philanthropy\u2019s boldest and most expansive efforts<\/a> to win reparations for descendants of enslaved Black Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are making significant changes to our work to center dismantling one of the biggest barriers to health in America: structural racism,\u201d Besser said in the group\u2019s 2024 annual report<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘In the Club’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

RWJF sees this board as a victory in bringing diversity to the upper echelons of philanthropy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/strong>I think we have trustees who are really steeped in the issues that the foundation is trying to address,\u201d says Fuller, who spent more than a decade on the board. \u201cAnd that’s more than was the case 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But critics question the outcomes of diversity efforts that prioritize race, gender, and sexual orientation in the way RWJF has remade its board. The result is a collection of individuals who make decisions from the same liberal worldview. \u201cGrant making is going to reflect insularity, a narrowing \u2014 you have to be \u2018in the club,\u2019\u201d says Michael Hartmann, a senior fellow at the Capital Research Center<\/a>, a conservative advocacy group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besser says RWJF\u2019s does not ask board candidates about their ideology or politics. But he says the board includes a \u201cpretty wide spectrum\u201d of political beliefs, while acknowledging that its focus represents what many see as  \u201ca fairly progressive vision for our nation.\u201d

\u201c<\/strong>You would not be a good candidate for our board if you didn’t understand the role that racial inequity plays in health,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously, some trustees were fairly conservative, Fuller says, but \u201cthat is much less the case now. The spectrum is from left to farther left.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, even as the foundation focused more on structural racism, Fuller says conversations remained wide-ranging. People continued to speak their minds. \u201cI don’t think it became an echo chamber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berman, the former Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors CEO, says there are foundations in which \u201ceverybody on the board would fit comfortably into one particular political party. And for a few foundations, both on the right and the left, that’s kind of essential to their mission, and that’s what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for others, Trump\u2019s 2016 election \u201cmade them recognize that nobody in the room understood anything at all about Youngstown, Ohio, or the other industrialized cities and farm communities in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump anti-DEI campaign will lead some foundations and nonprofits to de-emphasize race, ethnicity, and gender in their diversity analyses, says Tory Clarke, co-founder of Bridge Partners<\/a>, an executive search firm. \u201c<\/strong>Those will still be measured, but they aren’t going to drive things in the same way that they have in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RWJF, however, is showing no signs of retreat, pointing to its trustee diversity as something others should emulate. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a pretty big transformation of our board,\u201d Besser says. \u201cAnd that positions us well to meet the moment that we\u2019re in.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Commons is financed in part with philanthropic support from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Einhorn Collaborative, and the Walton Family Foundation. None of our supporters have any control over or input into story selection, reporting, or editing, and they do not review articles before publication. See <\/em>more about the Chronicle<\/em><\/a>, the grants, how our foundation-supported journalism works, and our <\/em>gift-acceptance policy<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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