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Mott Foundation elects three new members to its Board of Trustees

Foundation News

Mott Foundation Building.
The Mott Foundation Building in Flint, Michigan. Photo: Cristina Wright

Flint, Michigan — Helen Taylor, Jeremy Piper and Ridgway White have been elected to the Board of Trustees of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, effective January 1, 2016.

Helen Taylor headshot.
Helen Taylor.

Taylor, state director of The Nature Conservancy’s Michigan chapter, also serves as one of Governor Snyder’s representative on the Great Lakes Commission, an interstate agency promoting the integrated and comprehensive development, use and conservation of the water and related natural resources of the Great Lakes basin and St. Lawrence River.

Piper, a Flint-area attorney, also serves as board chair of the Flint Cultural Center Corporation, which oversees the management and maintenance of the center’s 33-acre campus and several institutions, including The Whiting, Sloan Museum, Buick Gallery and Longway Planetarium.

White, whom the Board of Trustees already had appointed as the fourth president of the Foundation in January 2015, has been a driving force behind public-private partnerships aimed at improving quality of life in the Foundation’s home community of Flint, Michigan.

Jeremy Piper headshot.
Jeremy Piper.

“We are very pleased that these three individuals have accepted positions on the Foundation’s Board,” said Foundation Chairman and CEO William S. White. “Not only are they familiar with the critical issues facing our home community and our home state, but each also brings expertise and experiences that will greatly enrich discussions, planning, and decision-making about our grantmaking throughout the world.”

Taylor, who has spent more than 27 years working on Great Lakes protection, policy and conservation issues, joined The Nature Conservancy in 1996. She has served as its state director for Michigan since 1999. She currently is a member of the editorial board of advisors for “Bridge Magazine,” as well as two external advisory boards at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and the Graham Sustainability Institute. A graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago, where she received a degree in philosophy, Taylor also is a board member of the Heart of the Lakes Center for Land Conservation Policy.

Ridgway White headshot.
Ridgway White.

A native of Flint, Piper received a degree in political science from Michigan’s Albion College and earned his law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. He returned to Flint to establish a practice specializing in real estate and business law. A board member of the Genesee County Bar Association for seven years, he continues to serve as the chair of the association’s District Court Committee.

White, who joined the staff of the Foundation in 2004 as a program assistant, was promoted to program officer for the Flint Area grantmaking team in 2009. In that capacity, he also served as a loaned executive to the Uptown Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing downtown Flint. Prior to becoming president of the Foundation, White served as a vice president for special projects at Mott and chair of the Foundation’s management working group. He is a graduate of Hobart College, where he studied architecture, economics and urban planning.

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