Board of Directors

Phil Buchanan

Phil Buchanan is president of CEP and was the first chief executive of the organization. At CEP, Phil has built a research team, secured funding, developed a research agenda, and managed the development and introduction of new performance assessment tools. Under his leadership, the organization has grown into the leading provider of comparative performance data to large foundations and other grantmaking institutions.

CEP’s research reports have shaped practice and understanding among foundation CEOs and trustees, and its assessment tools have been used by 200 foundations located in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Israel.

The organization has been credited with bringing the voice of grantees and other stakeholders into the foundation boardroom and with contributing to an increased emphasis on clear goals, coherent strategies, and relevant performance indicators as the necessary ingredients to maximize effectiveness and impact.

He holds an MBA from Harvard University and received his undergraduate degree in Government from Wesleyan University. Phil is a columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

M. Christine DeVita

M. Christine DeVita joined The Wallace Foundation in 1987 and was its president from 1989 to 2011. Under her leadership, the foundation evolved from a collection of small family funds into one of the nation’s 40 largest foundations with assets of more than $1 billion.

The foundation applies a unified strategy to all of its work, combining program, evaluation and communication expertise in an effort to deliver social benefits beyond the recipients of direct grants through the development and sharing of knowledge. Its work was profiled in Creative Philanthropy, by Helmut K. Anheier and Diana Leat.

Chris has spoken about innovative philanthropic practices in venues including The Council on Foundations, Grantmakers for Education, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County, the New England Museum Association, Duke University and Bates College. She recently served as Chair of the Board of Directors of The Foundation Center and a member of the visiting committee of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Born in New York, Chris earned her B.A. degree magna cum laude from Queens College of the City University of New York and her J.D. degree cum laude from Fordham University School of Law, where she was an editor of the Fordham Law Review. She is admitted to practice in New York and before the United States Supreme Court.

Crystal Hayling

Crystal was president and CEO of the Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF) from 2002-2009. She oversaw deployment of more than $100 million to strengthen Californiaʼs community clinics, achieve universal health coverage in the United States, and address family violence. Prior to joining BSCF Crystal was senior advisor for the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Crystal served as director of the Medi-Cal Policy Institute, a project of the California HealthCare Foundation in Oakland, where she worked from 1997 to 2003. Under her leadership, Crystal positioned the institute as a trusted source of information on health policy. In addition, she partnered with the foundationʼs technology team to develop Health-e App, the nationʼs first Webbased Medicaid application, which reduced the Medi-Cal approval process from three weeks to three days.

Crystal – who has lived and worked in China and Mexico – holds a BA from Yale University and a Masters in Management Science from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2008, she was the recipient of a 10^th Anniversary Madame C. J. Walker award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women Bay Area, and she is a 2007 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

For several years, Crystal has been honored by San Francisco Business Times as one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business. In 2010, she was honored to receive the James A. Joseph Award from the Association of Black Foundation Executives. Her acceptance speech, entitled “Five Things We Know, But Keep Forgetting” has been circulated widely since it was delivered at the Council on Foundations conference. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, an organization that provides foundations with comparative data to enable higher performance. She now lives in Singapore where she writes and consults with social enterprises. She is a member of the board of trustees of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation a regional think tank located at Singapore Management University.

Christine James-Brown

James R. Knickman

Jim is the first president and chief executive officer of the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth), which was established with assets that became available when the Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield converted from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. The foundation works on issues related to expanding insurance coverage, containing health care costs, improving access to high-quality health services, and expanding public health programs to prevent illness among New Yorkers. Before joining NYSHealth, Jim was vice president for research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in Princeton, New Jersey. At RWJF, Jim developed one of the early philanthropy organizational scorecards and helped introduce the idea of using strategic objectives and metrics.

Between 1976 and 1992, Jim served on the faculty of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, served on a wide range of advisory boards, and published extensive research on issues related to improving services for homeless families, frail elders, and people with HIV. He is also the co-author of a widely used textbook on health policy and management.

Jim serves on the board of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is a past chair of the New Jersey Department of Health’s Cardiac Health Advisory Council, a past board member of AcademyHealth in Washington, D.C., and a past board member of the New York Catholic Health Care System. Currently, he is a member of the editorial boards of The Milbank Quarterly and Inquiry.

Kathryn E. Merchant, Chair

Kathy is president/CEO of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation. Before joining the Foundation in 1997, Kathy was the director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Neighborhood Preservation Initiative and a partner in the New Haven-based consulting firm Holt, Wexler & Merchant. She has also served as the director of planning for the United Way of Greater New Haven and as planner/grants manager for the South Central Connecticut Area Agency on Aging, as well as adjunct faculty at Southern Connecticut State University and University of New Haven.

Kathy has served in leadership positions on a number of nonprofit boards of directors, including Giving Net (formerly Community Foundations of America), the SC Ministry Foundation, College of Mount St. Joseph, Ohio Grantmakers Forum, Saint Raphael Healthcare System, Saint Raphael Foundation, United Way of Greater New Haven and United Way of Connecticut. She is a graduate of Leadership Cincinnati Class XXI.

In addition to CEP, current board service includes the Cincinnati Strive Partnership for cradle to career education reform (chair), the National Center for Arts and Technology, and the Metropolitan Club (chair 2004). Kathy served on the board of the Council on Foundations 2001-07 and held numerous leadership positions, including vice chairman 2006-2007. She chaired the Council’s 2009 Annual Conference in Atlanta. In 2005, she received a Career Women of Achievement Award from the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, in 2006 received the Ohio Philanthropy Award from the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, and in 2008 was named by The Nonprofit Times as a “Top 50 Power and Influence” sector leader.

Grant Oliphant

Grant Oliphant is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Pittsburgh Foundation, one of the largest and oldest community foundations in the United States. He moved to the region's community foundation in March 2008 from The Heinz Endowments, one of the nation's leading private family foundations.

Grant who is the Foundation's fourth head in its 66-year history, has led a major transformation in the organization's engagement of key constituents, its efficient stewardship of its assets and the development of ground-breaking initiatives to enhance services for donors and maximize grantmaking impact in the regional community. This has included the launch of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program for the students of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and the development of PittsburghGives, an on-line giving and research portal that has raised $13.5 million in two years for local nonprofits with special Day of Giving events.

Grant frequently leads community conversations around critical issues and he has taken a prominent role in building advocacy programs to support the work of local nonprofits and the families and individuals they serve. He serves extensively on the boards of local nonprofit and national sector organizations.

Former Press Secretary to U.S. Sen. John Heinz from 1988 until the senator's untimely death in 1991, Grant received a Master's of Science Degree in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College. 

Christy Pichel

Christy Pichel is the President of the Stuart Foundation, a family foundation dedicated to the transformation of the public education and child welfare systems in California and Washington. Since her appointment in 2003, Christy has overseen the restructuring and integration of the Foundation’s programs and the investment of more than $100 million to improve support for foster youth and to increase educational opportunities for all students.

Christy has served in leadership positions in the non-profit and private sectors and has been involved in education and organizational development for thirty years. Prior to joining the Stuart Foundation, she held senior management positions at the James Irvine Foundation, the Public Policy Institute of California, and the CS Fund. She also served in leadership positions in non-profit organizations focusing on education and environmental issues and in management positions in small business start-ups. 

As a founder and executive director of an independent, non-profit school in Northern California, Christy oversaw the school’s development and establishment on its permanent site, along with a bio-dynamic garden and farm.  She was also a founder of an education foundation for a public high school district and served on budget, building and re-structuring committees and on the board of a charter school. Additionally, Christy was the director of the non-profit Farallones Institute, an early pioneer in renewable energy resources and sustainable agriculture.

Christy currently serves on the Board of Directors of Northern California Grantmakers and Global Student Embassy and on the President’s Roundtable of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She received an M.B.A. in International Business from Dominican University and a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Nadya K. Shmavonian

Nadya K. Shmavonian is an independent consultant to foundations and nonprofits. She recently served as president of Public/Private Ventures, a national nonprofit organization with the mission to improve the effectiveness of social programs, particularly those that aim to help young people from high-poverty communities successfully transition to adulthood. Prior to Public/Private Ventures, she served as vice president for strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. In that role, Nadya helped oversee a dramatic reframing of the Foundation’s programmatic and operating approach, readying Rockefeller to meet the new challenges of the twenty-first century.

Before joining the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation, Nadya worked for seven years as a consultant, providing strategic direction and counsel to foundations and nonprofit organizations. She has had extensive foundation management experience, including 12 years at the Pew Charitable Trusts, where she worked as executive vice president, following several years as director of administration and as a program officer in health and human services.

Among her consulting services, Nadya has provided strategic advice and coaching to CEOs of large, private foundations. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards over the past 20 years, including her current role as one of the first non-family board members of the Surdna Foundation.

Nadya holds a BA from the University of Chicago and a Master in Business Administration degree in health care management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Vince Stehle

Vince Stehle is the executive director of Media Impact Funders, a resource for grantmakers who fund media content, infrastructure, and policy, those who employ media to further their program goals. It also serves as a collaborative network for funders who wish to learn more about media. Prior to joining Media Impact Funders in 2011, Vince was the Program Director for the Nonprofit Sector Support Program at the Surdna Foundation for more than a decade, working to strengthen the policy and advocacy role of nonprofits, their internal management, and their ability to adapt to changing political, economic, and technological environments. Prior to working at Surdna, Vince covered fundraising and nonprofit management issues as a reporter for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He has written extensively for other publications, including The Washington Post and The Nation. Vince has served as Chairperson of Philanthropy New York (formerly the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers) and on the governing boards of VolunteerMatch and the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN).

Anne Warhover

Anne Warhover, President and CEO of the Colorado Health Foundation, guides the organization’s strategic direction and oversees more than 100 employees in their efforts to make Colorado the nation’s healthiest state.

Since 2004, Anne has been instrumental in working with the Foundation’s Board to focus the organization’s efforts on three outcomes: encouraging healthy living; increasing the number of Coloradans with health insurance; and ensuring they have access to cost-effective, quality, coordinated care. She also manages the Foundation’s ownership interest in Denver's HealthONE hospital system.

Prior to joining the Colorado Health Foundation, Warhover served as the president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, a business membership and civic organization. Before moving to the Partnership, Warhover was a vice president at First Interstate Bank of Denver, where she worked in Commercial Banking. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Colorado. Warhover serves on the boards of Grantmakers in Health, Rocky Mountain Health Plans and LiveWell Colorado.