Cameron Foundation president to retire

The Cameron Foundation’s president, J. Todd Graham, will retire Dec. 31, the Petersburg foundation announced Monday.

Graham has served as the foundation’s president since fall 2012. Under his leadership, the foundation has supported projects that have established school-based health clinics in Petersburg and Hopewell high schools, a teacher residency program in Petersburg schools to recruit, train and retain teachers, workforce training programs for local manufacturers and the emerging pharmaceutical industry cluster and others.

“After 10 years of serving as president, it’s time to pass the mantle to others,” he said in a statement. “Leadership transition is healthy for place-based foundations, which often wield significant influence in their region. A change in leadership can open doors to new ideas and approaches to addressing community needs.”

Graham helped the foundation develop proactive grantmaking strategies. Proactive projects are those of significant scale that have the potential to leverage funding from other sources and yield a long-term benefit for the community.

“Todd led us to see proactive grantmaking’s role as a new, high-impact philanthropic strategy to supplement the foundation’s traditional responsive grants program and nonprofit capacity-building initiatives,” Cameron Board Chair J. Tolleison Morriss VI said in a statement. “Since the launch of this strategy in 2015, we estimate that our proactive grants have leveraged approximately $47 million from other sources — which amounts to more than $4 from other sources for every $1 that Cameron has committed proactively.”

Before joining the foundation, Graham served as executive director of the Robins Foundation in Richmond. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of the Iowa West Foundation and of the Iowa West Racing Association, a nonprofit license holder for three casinos, for eight years. From 1999 to 2003, Graham led a foundation funded by Seattle Seahawks owner and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen to address the impacts of the Seahawks’ stadium on surrounding communities.

Graham earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Wake Forest University and a master’s in city planning from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

The foundation’s board will conduct a nationwide search for Graham’s successor with assistance from an executive search firm.

Founded in 2003, The Cameron Foundation is a private foundation formed from the proceeds of the Hospital Authority of the city of Petersburg’s sale of Southside Regional Medical Center. Since it began providing grants in 2004, the foundation has awarded more than $100 million to organizations serving residents of Petersburg, Colonial Heights and Hopewell and the surrounding counties.