Conference Speaker Biographies

EMMETT D. CARSON
President and CEO
The Minneapolis Foundation

Emmett D. Carson is president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation, one of the largest, oldest and most complex community foundations in the country. He oversees the Foundation’s grantmaking, loan making, communications, fund development and investment management activities. As spokesperson, he is responsible for developing collaborative relationships with all sectors and segments of the community, as well as with other organizations nationwide. Since his arrival in 1994, the Minneapolis Foundation has embarked on a 10-year, $20 million initiative to improve the lives of children and families in poverty, raised record annual gifts ($46 million in fiscal year 1999) and increased total assets under management from $186 million to over $400 million.

Dr. Carson came to the Minneapolis Foundation from the Ford Foundation in New York, where he was a program officer, first in the area of social justice and then in governance and public policy. He managed a $10 million grantmaking budget as part of his responsibilities for domestic and international support of community foundations and the nonprofit sector.

Prior to his work with the Ford Foundation, Dr. Carson served as project director of the Study on Black Philanthropy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., where he designed and directed the first national study of the charitable giving and volunteer behavior of black and white Americans. Dr. Carson has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the honor of having been named one of the top 50 most powerful and influential people in the nonprofit sector by The Nonprofit Times in 1998.

Among his many board memberships, he is a member of the board of the Council on Foundations, an overseer of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and a member of the advisory committee of The Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. In Minnesota, he serves as a director of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, a governor of Eleven Who Care and a trustee of Minnesota Meeting.

A native of Chicago, Emmett Carson received a Phi Beta Kappa B.A. in economics from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and MPA and PhD degrees in public and international affairs from Princeton University. He is author of several books and dozens of articles on American philanthropy.

STEVE CASE
Chairman And CEO
America Online, Inc.

Steve Case is chairman and chief executive officer of America Online, Inc., the world's leading interactive services company. Under his leadership, AOL supports programs that use interactive technology to empower the disadvantaged. To achieve this goal the company created the AOL Foundation in 1997, which uses educational programs, community building and increasing access to interactive services to improve the lives of families and children. These efforts include:

• Providing teams of educators and community leaders with seed money to develop innovative ways to improve student performance through the integration of interactive technology.
• Supporting the volunteer activities of AOL employees.
• Promoting telecommunications innovations that strengthen rural community service.
• Partnering with the Benton Foundation and the National Urban League to create the National Digital Divide Clearinghouse, a unique resource that brings together the information on initiatives to narrow the gap between technology haves and have-nots.
• Creating a philanthropy portal called helping.org to make it easier for people to give their time and money to charities.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Steve Case graduated with a degree in Political Science from Williams College.

KEVIN A. FONG
General Partner
The Mayfield Fund

Kevin A. Fong, a general partner of the Mayfield Fund, specializes in forming and investing in early-stage companies in the communications and software sectors. The Mayfield Fund is a private venture capital partnership based in Menlo Park, California.

Mr. Fong is a director of the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley and one of two co-chairs of Silicon Valley 2 (SV2), a new fund created for young professionals that promotes intelligent, active and effective giving to nonprofit organizations. He has worked with the community foundation to establish a new regional initiative to increase and promote corporate and individual giving among Silicon Valley residents.

Mr. Fong serves on the boards of the Western Association of Venture Capital and Networld/InterOp. He is also a columnist for Network World and has worked in management, marketing and technical engineering capacities for several companies. Mr. Fong also acquired entrepreneurial experience at DAVID Systems, a venture-backed start-up.

Mr. Fong holds an MBA and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

PETER D. HART
Founder
Peter D. Hart Research Associates

Peter D. Hart founded Peter D. Hart Associates, a public opinion research firm, in 1971. Since its inception, the firm has conducted more than 5,000 public opinion surveys, including interviews with more than 2.5 million individuals.

Mr. Hart has been the pollster for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal since 1989. In the political realm, he has represented more than 40 U.S. senators and 30 governors, ranging from Hubert Humphrey to Jay Rockefeller, and has conducted public policy and cultural issue analysis for clients such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Kennedy Center. In the international realm, he has conducted studies in South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The firm also has performed strategic planning projects for such corporate clients as Time Warner Inc., American Airlines, Microsoft, and AT&T.

Mr. Hart appears frequently on major television programs that discuss public policy issues, including Meet the Press, The Today Show, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Along with Robert Teeter, he has been selected by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal to conduct their public opinion polling- the first time any outside firm has been retained by a news organization to conduct surveys that bear the name of the sponsoring organization.

Mr. Hart received his BA from Colby College. He is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and a visiting professor at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University.

DOROTHY A. JOHNSON
President Emeritus
Council of Michigan Foundations

Dorothy Johnson served as President of the Council of Michigan Foundations for 25 years. The Council, an association of 467 Michigan foundations and corporations offering grants for charitable causes, is the largest regional association of grantmakers in the nation. The mission of the association is to enhance, improve, and increase philanthropy in the state of Michigan. Ms. Johnson was also president of the Community Foundation Youth Project, a program created to develop youth philanthropy programs.

Currently, Ms. Johnson is a trustee of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, a trustee of the Grand Valley State University Board and a director of the Corporation for National Service in Washington, D. C., a position to which she was nominated by President Clinton in 1998. Ms. Johnson is also a commissioner, advisor and board member of many state, regional and national organizations.

She was named Distinguished Grantmaker for the year 2000 by the Council of Foundations, received the Olivet College Leadership Award for Leadership in the Not-for-Profit Sector and received the Women of Achievement and Courage Award from the Michigan Women’s Foundation. In 1994 she received the Founders Award from the Michigan AIDS Fund and was elected to the Grand Valley State University Hall of Fame in 1990. She was named Woman of the Year by Counterpart in 1988.

Ms. Johnson received her BA from the University of California at Berkeley and earned a Certificate of Business Administration from the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration.

WILLIAM P. MASSEY
President
National Charities Information Bureau

Since 1998, Bill Massey has served as president of the National Charities Information Bureau (NCIB), an 80-year-old organization committed to promoting responsible and informed philanthropy. Believing that donors are entitled to accurate information about the charitable organizations that seek their support, NCIB strives to enable contributors to make sound giving decisions. NCIB believes that well-informed givers will ask questions and make judgments that will lead to an improved level of performance by charitable organizations.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Massey was executive director of the Kathleen Price Bryan Family Fund in North Carolina, and senior vice president of Ruder Finn Public Relations in New York and Raleigh, N.C. From 1988 to 1991, he was associate vice chancellor for university relations at his alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Mr. Massey is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and a director of the Roanoke Island Historical Association and the Penland School of Crafts. He is a member of the Chancellors Club of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mr. Massey received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Master’s of Education from Duke University.

CATHERINE MUTHER
Founder and President
Three Guineas Fund

Catherine Muther is the founder and president of the Three Guineas Fund, a public grant making foundation incorporated in 1994. This California foundation’s mission is to create access to opportunity for women and girls in education and the economy. Recently the fund launched the Women’s Technology Cluster (WTC), a San Francisco industry focused incubator for women- led start up businesses in information technology.

Ms. Muther has held vice president and officer positions in leading Silicon Valley companies in the computer networking industry. Between 1989 and 1994, during Ms. Muther’s tenure as senior marketing officer at Cisco Systems Inc., the company grew from $25 million in sales to more than $1 billion, and joined the Fortune 500. Prior to her time at Cisco, she was the vice president of Corporate Marketing at 3Com and at Bridge Communications, Inc. She began her business career as a consultant in San Francisco at Arthur D. Little, Inc.

Ms. Muther has served as a trustee of Mills College and Sarah Lawrence College and is a current board member of Cambridge University in America. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Women in Science and Technology and received a Women Making History Award from the City of San Francisco.

Ms. Muther graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business with an MBA. She earned an MA degree from Cambridge University, England, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College.

JUSTIN RANDALL TIMBERLAKE
Performer
‘N SYNC

Justin Timberlake is an 18-year old singer from Memphis, Tennessee, and the youngest member of the teen musical sensation N’SYNC. Like many well-known artists, Justin started his musical career in church, where he was given the tools and encouragement to develop his talents. Justin’s appreciation for his success, coupled with a heartfelt awareness of the importance of giving back, has led him to partner with the Giving Back Fund to create a charitable foundation which will provide schools with the assistance they need to create high-caliber music programs for students. Justin has said that when he was in school, the music programs afforded to him were without the basic tools young artists needed, namely instruments. He hopes his foundation will afford other young people opportunities to express themselves artistically and find musical talents within themselves.

The Giving Back Fund is a national nonprofit organization that helps professional athletes, entertainers and others establish and maintain charitable foundations for philanthropic giving.