July 9, 2024
Ms. Foundation for Women Announces Three New Board Members
The nation’s oldest women’s foundation names Kathy Ko Chin, Mary Kathryn Nagle, and Dr. Renée T. White to its distinguished board as it closes out its largest fundraising campaign to date
NEW YORK (July 9, 2024) – Today, Ms. Foundation for Women announced the appointments of Kathy Ko Chin, CEO of Jasper Inclusion Advisors, Mary Kathryn Nagle, attorney and playwright, and Dr. Renée T. White, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs of The New School to its distinguished national Board of Directors. These additions bring significant expertise within philanthropy, Indigenous law, public health, academia and the arts. These dedicated feminists add to Ms. Foundation’s diverse and dynamic board committed to building women’s collective power in the U.S. to advance equity and justice for all.
“It is an honor to welcome these three powerful leaders to our board during a time when our work to fight for gender and racial equity is as important as ever,” said Teresa C. Younger, President, and CEO of Ms. Foundation for Women. “I look forward to the contributions and wealth of expertise they will bring to our board as Ms. Foundation for Women continues to strategize for the future and work to ensure the impact of our partners across the country is felt as we advance our collective goal of achieving a just and safe world.”
The Ms. Foundation is also pleased to announce the following officer transitions: Yin Ling Leung will serve as Chair and Charline Gipson as Vice Chair. Diane Manuel will serve as Treasurer and James White as Secretary.
Kathy Ko Chin | Board Member
Kathy Ko Chin, CEO of Jasper Inclusion Advisors, advises on philanthropic and policy strategy and provides nonprofit executive mentoring, focusing on women of color leaders. From 2010-2020, Chin was president & CEO of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum. Her proudest contributions included co-leading a national coalition to enroll 1 million Asian Americans in ACA coverage across 23 states and securing Medicaid for 100,000 Pacific Islanders.
The daughter of immigrants from China, Chin’s 45-year career has built community institutions that work towards a just and multiracial society, leading the American Public Health Association to honor her with the prestigious Helen Rodriguez-Trias Social Justice Award in 2020. These institutions include community clinics, historic preservation, public policy, and mutual aid associations.
Chin has served on and chaired the boards of numerous government and nonprofit entities, including grantmaking, financing, and investment decisions, at the national, state, and local levels. From 2014-2017, she served on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She joined The Kresge Foundation Board of Trustees in 2017 and the boards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Ms. Foundation in 2024. In 2023, Chin was a fellow at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative and mentors at the Harvard Innovation Lab.
Mary Kathryn Nagle | Board Member
Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is an attorney whose work focuses on the restoration of tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the first Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Public Theater Emerging Writers Program. Productions include Miss Lead (Amerinda, 59E59), Fairly Traceable (Native Voices at the Autry), Sovereignty (Arena Stage), Manahatta (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Return to Niobrara (Rose Theater), and Crossing Mnisose (Portland Center Stage), Sovereignty (Marin Theatre Company), Manahatta (Yale Repertory Theatre), On the Far End (Round House Theater). She has received commissions from Arena Stage, the Rose Theater (Omaha, Nebraska), Portland Center Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, Round House Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Theater, the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, and the Santa Fe Opera. She also works in film and television. Most recently she served as an Associate Producer on the film PREY.
She is most well known for her work on ending violence against Native women. Her play Sliver of a Full Moon has been performed in law schools from Stanford to Harvard, NYU and Yale. She has worked extensively on Violence Against Women Act re-authorization, and she has filed numerous briefs in the United States Supreme Court, as a part of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s VAWA Sovereignty Initiative, including most recently, Denezpi v. United States, United States v. Cooley, Oklahoma v. Murphy, Oklahoma v. McGirt, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, Brackeen v. Haaland, and United States v. Rahimi. She represents numerous families of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, including Kaysera Stops Pretty Places’ family who have brought a public campaign demanding an investigation into her murder. More can be read here: www.justiceforkaysera.org.
Dr. Renée T. White | Board Member
Dr. Renée T. White is the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs of The New School and a professor of sociology at The New School for Social Research. With nearly 30 years of experience working in higher education, Dr. White came to The New School from Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where she had served as provost and professor of sociology. Dr. White served as a professor of sociology and Black studies and the academic coordinator for Diversity and Global Citizenship at Fairfield University.
Dr. White is the editor of four books, including Afrofuturism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity, and the Re-Making of Blackness (2021), and the author of Putting Risk in Perspective: Black Teenage Lives in the Era of AIDS. She has also served as editor of the Journal of HIV/AIDS Prevention in Children and Youth. Dr. White completed a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Black film studies. Her current research focuses on representations of Blackness in popular culture and applications of Black feminist theory to higher education leadership.
Dr. White holds an AB from Brown University and an MA and PhD from Yale University. She is a member of the Rachel Carson Council National Advisory Council, an honorary board member of the Synthia SAINT JAMES Art Legacy Foundation, and a member of the advisory board of Seeds of Fortune. In June 2024, Dr. White’s accomplishments in higher education were recognized when she was named to the City & State New York’s 2024 Trailblazers in Higher Education list.
For more information regarding the Ms. Foundation board, please visit forwomen.org/about/our-board/.
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For more than 50 years, Ms. Foundation for Women has shaped women’s philanthropy in the United States, providing a blueprint for the establishment of hundreds of local and regional women’s funds, influencing mainstream culture through nationwide projects such as Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and making grants totaling over $90 million to more than 1,600 grassroots organizations across the country. Through research, advocacy, and grantmaking, Ms. Foundation is the national model for sustainable, trust-based philanthropic support of women of color-led movements. With equity and inclusion as the cornerstones of true democracy, Ms. Foundation works to create a world in which the worth and dignity of every person are valued, and power and possibility are not limited by gender, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age.
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