Board Members

Ann S. Bowers is the Chair of the board and the founding trustee of the Noyce Foundation. Previously, her career was in human resources management in California's Silicon Valley. She was the first Director of Personnel for Intel Corp. and the first Vice President of Human Resources for Apple Inc., formerly known as Apple Computer. In both of these high-growth, startup companies and in her consulting practice, she created and implemented the worldwide human resources policies and practices that fostered the growth of organizational excellence. Bowers served as a Director of the Exploratorium in San Francisco for many years and currently is the Chair of the board of the Tech Museum in San Jose. Bowers also is a Trustee Emerita, Presidential Councilor and on the Life Sciences Advisory Board at Cornell University. She received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Santa Clara, where she was a Trustee for nearly 20 years.

Laura L. Carstensen is founding Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, which explores innovative ways to solve the problems of people over 50 and improve the well-being of people of all ages. She is Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and professor of psychology at Stanford. She is best known for socioemotional selectivity theory, a life-span theory of motivation. Carstensen’s research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging for more than 20 years. With her students and colleagues, she has published well over 125 articles on life-span development and, in 2009, she authored A Long Bright Future: An Action Plan for a Lifetime of Happiness, Health, and Financial Security. Carstensen’s most current research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing. Her professional fellowships include the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association and The Gerontological Society of America. Carstensen serves on the Board of Science Advisors to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany and has chaired two studies for the National Academy of Sciences, resulting in The Aging Mind and When I’m 64. She is a member of The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on an Aging Society. Carstensen has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Distinguished Career Award from The Gerontological Society of America. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from West Virginia University.

Lewis M. Feldstein (Treasurer) is President of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the principal source of venture capital for New Hampshire’s nonprofit community. An expert on civic engagement, Feldstein co-chaired Harvard University’s three-year executive seminar on civic engagement in America with Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone. He and Putnam co-authored Better Together: Restoring the American Community in 2003. In recent years, Feldstein was selected as one of the 100 People Who Shaped New Hampshire in the 20th Century, published by the Concord Monitor; one of The 2008 NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50 members of the U.S. nonprofit world; and one of the 10 most influential people in New Hampshire by Business NH Magazine. Feldstein started his career working with the civil rights movement in Mississippi. He served in senior staff positions to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay and worked as provost of the Antioch New England Graduate School (now known as Antioch University New England), among many other jobs. Feldstein serves on several boards, including the board of directors of Independent Sector. Feldstein is a graduate of Brown University and holds a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from Tufts University. He has received seven honorary doctorates.

Ellen Goodman, who was a longtime syndicated columnist for The Boston Globe and the Washington Post Writers Group, has spent most of her life chronicling social change and its impact on American life. The Pulitzer Prize-winner continues that tradition from her observation post now as a writer, speaker and commentator. Goodman began her career as a researcher for Newsweek magazine in the days when only men wrote for the newsweekly. She landed a job as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in 1965 and, in 1967, for The Boston Globe, where she began writing her column in 1974. The Washington Post Writers Group syndicated her column from 1976 to 2010. A 1963 cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Goodman served as a Nieman Fellow from 1973-1974 at Harvard University, where she studied the dynamics of social change. In 2007, she was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she studied gender and the news. As the first Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Professional Journalism, she taught at Stanford University in 1996. Goodman’s first book, 1979’s Turning Points, detailed the effect of the changing roles of women on the family. Six collections of her columns also have been published. She is co-author with Patricia O’Brien of I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives, published in 2000. Goodman won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1980. She has won many other awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award.

Sherry Lansing (Secretary) is the founder and current Chair of The Sherry Lansing Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on cancer research, health and education. Lansing was the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Group of Paramount Pictures from 1992 to 2005, where she oversaw the release of more than 200 films, including Academy Award-winners Forrest Gump (1994), Braveheart (1995) and Titanic (1997). A pioneering studio executive, Lansing is the first woman in the film industry to oversee all aspects of a studio’s motion picture production. Currently, Lansing serves on the Executive Committee of the board of directors of Friends of Cancer Research and as a Trustee of the American Association for Cancer Research. She also lends her energy and talents to such organizations as Stand Up To Cancer, which she co-founded to raise funds for collaborative cancer research; Stop Cancer, a nonprofit philanthropic group she founded in partnership with Dr. Armand Hammer; the American Red Cross Board of Governors; and the board of trustees for The Carter Center. Lansing is also founder of the EnCorps Teachers Program, a public/private partnership which retrains retiring technology sector professionals to serve as California middle and high school science and math teachers. Additionally, Lansing is a Regent of the University of California, serving as Chair of the Health Services Committee. In December 2004, she was appointed to the Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency charged with disbursing $3 billion in funding for embryonic stem cell research. Lansing graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1966.

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor and nationally recognized authority on women's experience and family issues. She chronicled and fostered change in women’s lives as the first editor of Ms. magazine and today as a contributing editor of More magazine. She is a lecturer, appears frequently on television and is an adviser to several women’s and media groups and organizations dealing with midlife issues. Levine has defined a new stage of life – women in second adulthood – and reports on the ongoing changes in women’s lives in her books and on her website, www.suzannebraunlevine.com. Her new book, Fifty is the New Fifty: 10 Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood, continues the conversation she began with Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, published in 2005. That groundbreaking book ignited a national conversation about a new “stage” of life that 37 million women are beginning to define by living it. Her blog, “Inventing the Rest of My Life,” appears on the More magazine website. In 2007, she co-authored (with editor and author, Mary Thom) Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way, a widely acclaimed oral history of the congresswoman from New York.

Webb McKinney is currently a management consultant with a primary focus on merger integration. He also serves on the boards of four nonprofit organizations, besides Civic Ventures: Resource Area for teaching, the American Leadership Forum - Silicon Valley and ALearn. McKinney also serves on the board of SMART Modular Technologies. Prior to retiring from the Hewlett Packard Company after 34 years in November 2003, McKinney was the Executive Vice President leading HP's ongoing merger integration and global citizenship efforts, as well as HP's organizational effectiveness and governance initiatives. Previously, McKinney co-led HP's postmerger integration team. His responsibilities included planning and leading the integration of HP and Compaq's systems, processes and people. Before the merger, McKinney served as President for the Business Customer Organization at HP, with responsibility for worldwide sales of HP products and services and worldwide marketing and delivery of HP products to large companies and small- and medium-sized businesses. McKinney was born in Upland, Calif. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California.

Beverly Ryder is an accomplished executive with 30 years of corporate experience in the banking and energy industries. Since leaving the private sector in 2007, she has been actively engaged in improving and reforming K-12 education. Ryder worked with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) from 2006 to 2008, forming the Office of Parent and Civic Engagement. She is the co-author of For the Benefit of Our Children: Parent School Collaboration, a report on the quality of parent engagement in the LAUSD. With the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, she initiated a joint office between LAUSD and the chamber specializing in developing school-business partnerships in small learning communities and small schools. Ryder served for nine years as the Corporate Secretary of Edison International and its utility subsidiary, Southern California Edison Co. Additionally, she was the company’s Vice President of community involvement, overseeing philanthropic and employee volunteer activities. Ryder has had extensive nonprofit experience as a board member of numerous community and civic organizations. She currently serves on the board of Claremont Graduate University as Chair of the Presidential Search Committee and Vice Chair of the Audit Committee; on the boards of advisers of the Stanford University and Claremont University schools of education; and as President-elect of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She is an emeritus trustee of Stanford University and a former member the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Accrediting Commission of Senior Colleges and Universities. Ryder earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She completed the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2006.

Ruth A. Wooden (Chair) is President and CEO of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research organization helping Americans explore and understand critical issues. Before joining Public Agenda, she was Executive Vice President and Senior Counselor at Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm known for its expertise in social marketing and health care. Prior to Porter Novelli, Wooden ran her own communications consulting firm and was President and former board member of the National Parenting Association (NPA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded to spark a parents’ movement to make parenting a higher priority in private lives and on the public agenda. For 11 years before joining NPA, she was President of the Advertising Council Inc., an organization that yearly mobilizes more than $1 billion of advertising space and time, the creative services of major advertising agencies and financial support from hundreds of corporations. Wooden led the Advertising Council (commonly known as the Ad Council) into important new strategic areas, playing an instrumental role in the 1995 development of Commitment 2000, the organization's 10-year initiative to build support for family issues. She also was a key player in developing and executing Kids These Days: What Americans Really Think About the Next Generation, a multi-year study that tracks American attitudes toward children and parents. After leaving the Ad Council and prior to joining NPA, Wooden worked on the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, serving as coordinator of the Crystal Team, a group of volunteer advertising professionals who created Bradley's advertising. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota and an honorary doctorate from Northeastern University.