Diana R. Sieger is the president of the Grand Rapids Commmunity Foundation. For more information, visit Diana's President's pages or view her biography.
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feed sourceRecent Posts
- 08/13/08 - Spirit of GR - Part 2.5!!!
- 08/13/08 - The Spirit of Grand Rapids - Part 2!
- 07/28/08 - The Spirit of Grand Rapids - What's the Future - from 1989 to 2008!
- 06/30/08 - Deja vu all over again!
- 06/23/08 - "Cushy" - "retiring" - hardly!
- Archived Posts
Other Blogs of Note
- Philanthropy 2173
- Tactical Philanthropy
- Singh around the World
- Stanford Social Innovation Review
- White Courtesy Telephone
- Chronicle of Philanthropy: Give & Take
- Open Hands
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President's Point of View: Collaboration, leadership and West Michigan!
March 20, 2008
Back about 10 years ago, I chaired the Committee on Community Foundations (now known as the Community Foundation Leadership Team) at the Council on Foundations. I always opened up the meetings with “I just flew in from the Center of the Universe and life is great in Grand Rapids”. Usually met with chuckles and meant to be an ice breaker, I was somewhat serious as West Michigan is becoming a center for many tremendous things - certainly entrepreneurship, its philanthropic strength and innovation!
So from the “Center of Universe” comes the announcement today that Dr. Juan Olivarez will be stepping down from his position as the President of the Grand Rapids Community College to become the President of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation! We all know Juan to be an exceptional leader, innovator and really just an outstanding individual.
He has served on our board for the past six years and will be coming into his new position well-versed and positioned to continue the great work of Jack Hopkins who is retiring as President of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation in a few months after serving there for 25 years! Jack has been a great colleague and friend of mine. We did concoct quite a few ideas for our region as well as ideas for leading our field which we both did a few years ago through the Council on Foundations. I will miss him and I know that his legacy will be felt for quite some as he focused on economic development, education and embracing diversity which are just a few of his gifts to Kalamazoo.
This is a bittersweet situation - we will be saying best wishes to Jack and to Juan yet I know that Juan’s influence in our community will live on also. And I know that there will be new opportunities for our region to work together to grow and prosper as Juan is not going too far away and in fact he will be a strong partner in our regional efforts!
Congratulations to Juan! And I’m not saying goodbye to Jack just yet as it will be a few months! I look forward to the future and seeing West Michigan become even stronger!
