A Note to Our Community from Board Chair Scott Hafner

We're pleased to introduce our new Executive Director, Kim Bender.

Dear Friends,

We offer our warmest greetings, and we hope that this finds you and your family safe and healthy during these days of anxious uncertainty due to coronavirus. We all have the good fortune to be part of a small, tightly knit community here in northern Sonoma County. Each of us are holding concerns for our neighbors, family and friends, both here and in the wider world.

I am writing today with a glimmer of good news, and to update you on our current plan for moving forward during this rapidly evolving situation.

First, on behalf of the Board of Directors, we are pleased to announce that we’ve selected a new Executive Director, Kim Bender, to lead the Healthcare Foundation in the coming years. We conducted a months-long national search that yielded a large group of talented candidates. Kim’s impressive accomplishments over her long career here in the Bay Area, as well as her warm demeanor, collaborative style and passion for helping others, caught the attention of the Search Committee immediately. We invite you to read Kim’s bio, and we look forward to her first meetings with you and other members of the community in the coming months. I want to thank my five board colleagues on the Search Committee (Denny Martin, Peter McAweeney, Donna Merideth, Danielle Restieaux Murphy and Bill Smart), as well as our pro bono consultant Kathi Safford, for their dedication and thoroughness, which has yielded a great result.

Inspired leadership based on broad experience is key to the success of any non-profit organization at any time—and these times are anything but normal. This leads me to our second point.

We realize that our grantees will need our support more than ever, and our donors will look to us to lead as we always have, in a structured, thoughtful and strategic way. We are actively reaching out to our grantees and other members of our community to understand their current challenges and identify opportunities to work together. We look forward to supporting our grantees on the front lines, collaborating to identify the greatest needs and updating our donors as those needs come into focus.

All of us at the Healthcare Foundation are honored to serve as your partners in building a healthy and vibrant community here in northern Sonoma County. We encourage you to follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram), where you will find updates and advice on this evolving situation. And, as always, hearing from you with your thoughts and concerns helps to provide us with direction and inspiration.

Together, we will get through this. We are grateful for your support and extend every best wish to you and our entire community.

Scott Hafner
Chair, Board of Directors


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