Deborah Ellwood will take the helm in late June as MaineCF’s president and CEO. She shares her love of Maine with her husband, Andy Dick, pictured here as they hike the Schoodic Peninsula, and looks forward to more skiing and swimming in Maine. Photo: Deborah Ellwood
A love for Maine and wealth of experience in the community foundation field made Deborah Ellwood the right choice for MaineCF after its national search for a new leader.
Ellwood, a Bowdoin graduate with family in Maine, will join the community foundation in late June as its seventh president and CEO. For the past dozen years, she has led CFLeads, the country’s network of community foundations. The organization recently received an unsolicited $5 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and her husband Dan Jewett to expand work in the community foundation field.
“I am humbled to be part of an organization with such an impressive track record of success and look forward to building on and growing the relationships, partnerships, and collaborations needed to help MaineCF fulfill its mission to bring people and resources together for a strong Maine,” Ellwood said. She will be based in MaineCF’s Ellsworth office.
Ellwood also has a track record of improving outcomes at the local level as a board and staff leader at the Rochester Area Community Foundation in Rochester, New York. In addition, she brings experience as a policy researcher and advocate from her work at Children Now in California, the Center for the Study of the States in Albany, New York, and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where she helped advance public policies that improve the lives of children.
