Karen Kelley-Ariwoola, our Vice President of Community Philanthropy, is leaving The Minneapolis Foundation, effective March 30. After 18 wonderful years of service, Karen is eager to spend more time with her family. Karen intends to remain active in the Twin Cities community and looks forward to finding future opportunities for continued engagement and community leadership.

Karen has made a deep and lasting mark on both the Foundation and our community. She is well-regarded locally and nationally for her leadership on education, early childhood, and racial equity. Her persistent, collaborative, and compassionate efforts have contributed to many of Minnesota's recent gains in each of these areas, as have the relationships she has built over time with nonprofit, corporate and foundation leaders and elected officials at all levels.

Karen has also been instrumental in the Minnesota Helps tornado recovery effort – not just for her role in raising and distributing well over a million dollars in relief, but for supporting the efforts of local agencies to create a new model for working together and a new vision for North Minneapolis. (Many of us were touched by her personal account of the tornado's devastation and the community's resilience that was published in the Star Tribune.) She played the same great collaborative leadership role on behalf of our community in the wake of the 35W bridge disaster a few years ago.

Karen will leave behind a huge body of work and impact on the Foundation's grantmaking, advocacy, leadership, donor relations, and more. She significantly helped shape our work on racial equity, youth violence prevention, early childhood and student achievement, and our own Minnesota meeting public affairs forum. We will miss her deeply.

We're grateful that Karen will remain with us through March 30 to help make the transition as smooth as possible for the Foundation, our constituents, and the community. You can expect our grantmaking and community leadership work to stay on track. We are deeply committed to our strategic goals of transforming education, promoting economic vitality, and building social capital – all towards the end of creating a more equitable community. We're also committed to being a responsive and effective community partner and look forward to a continued relationship with you in support of our common goals.

We look forward to celebrating her accomplishments later this spring. In the meantime, please join me in thanking Karen for nearly two decades of service to The Minneapolis Foundation, the field of philanthropy, and our community. We wish Karen and her family health, happiness, and prosperity.