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Paul S.
Grogan became the President and CEO of the Boston Foundation, one of
the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations, on July 1,
2001. With assets of more than $750 million, the Foundation
distributed grants of $60 plus million to nonprofit organizations
throughout the Greater Boston community in 2005. Since coming to the
Foundation, Mr. Grogan has boosted fundraising and streamlined
operations while also launching high-impact initiatives in housing,
the arts, education reform, workforce development and civic
engagement. Under Mr. Grogan’s leadership, the Foundation has become
a central convener on issues and challenges facing the City and the
region.
Mr. Grogan joined the Foundation from Harvard University, where he
served as Vice President for Government, Community and Public
Affairs from 1999 to 2001. As one of five vice presidents of the
University, he oversaw all government relations for Harvard,
relations with Harvard’s host communities of Cambridge and Boston,
and the Harvard news office. He was also a Senior Lecturer at the
Harvard Business School. Mr. Grogan spearheaded unprecedented
University commitments to the community, including $21 million for
affordable housing and $5 million for the Harvard After-School
Initiative. He successfully transformed the University’s previously
poor relationship with the City of Boston, which paved the way for
Harvard to double its property holdings in the Allston neighborhood
with the public blessing of the Mayor, local neighborhood groups and
the editorial page of the Boston Globe.
While at Harvard Grogan created a new national organization, “CEOs
for Cities”, whose members are big city mayors, business leaders,
university presidents and foundation executives. “CEOs” holds semi
annual conferences and publishes cutting edge research on the nature
of successful urban economies.
From 1986 through 1998, he was President and CEO of the nonprofit
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the nation’s largest
community development intermediary. During his term as president,
LISC raised and invested more than $3 billion of private capital in
inner-city revitalization efforts across America, all channeled
through local nonprofit community development corporations. While
under Mr. Grogan’s leadership, LISC also made vital contributions to
a string of national policy successes, including the creation of the
Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the establishment of the HOME
program, the strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act and the
creation of the New Markets Tax Credit. Noted author and dean of the
Columbia School of Journalism Nicholas Lemann has written that “Paul
Grogan is one of the heroes of the community development movement.”
Mr. Grogan’s passion for cities began in Boston where he served
Mayors Kevin H. White and Raymond L. Flynn in a variety of staff and
line positions. He headed Boston’s neighborhood revitalization
efforts in the early 80s, where he pioneered a series of
public/private ventures that have been widely emulated by other
cities. These included the Boston Housing Partnership and the Boston
Compact, a partnership between the city’s corporate community and
public school system.
Mr. Grogan graduated with a degree with honors in American History
from Williams College in 1972 and earned a Masters degree in
Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in
1979. In 1997, Williams College awarded Mr. Grogan a Bicentennial
Medal for his leadership in inner-city revitalization efforts. He is
a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a director
of the for-profit company, the Community Development Trust, which he
helped found; and a former trustee of Williams College.
Mr. Grogan is the co-author, with Tony Proscio, of the book Comeback
Cities, published in 2000, which syndicated columnist Ron Brownstein
of the Los Angeles Times has written is “arguably the most important
and insightful book on the American city in a generation.”
He and his wife, Karen
Sunnarborg, a city planner, are raising three sons in the Jamaica
Plain neighborhood of Boston.
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