American Asthma Foundation
Board of Directors
The American Asthma Foundation consists of these prestigious and accomplished persons from a diverse range of disciplines and experiences. Working together, this active Board has a passion for solving problems, and they bring to the Foundation the urgency and presence needed to achieve our mission: to raise funds, which will be used to accelerate research efforts to improve treatments, prevention, and find a cure for asthma.
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Dr. Madeleine K. Albright
Madeleine K. Albright is a Principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm, and Chair and Principal of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. Dr. Albright was the 64th Secretary of State of the United States. In 1997, she was named the first female Secretary of State and became, at that time, the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as a member of the President’s Cabinet. She is the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. Dr. Albright co-chairs the UNDP’s Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Trustees for the Aspen Institute and the Board of Directors of the Center for a New American Security.
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Susan V. Berresford
Susan V. Berresford served as the President of the Ford Foundation from 1996 – 2008. In her 38 years there she held numerous positions, including: Project Assistant and Program Officer in the Division of National Affairs, Officer in Charge of the Foundation’s Women’s Programs, Vice President, U.S. and International Affairs Programs and Vice President of the Program Division. She currently works at the New York Community Trust consulting on philanthropy; serves as Chair of United States Artists; is a Board Member of the Independent Sector; an Advisory Board Member of the Trinidad Trust Fund; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Trinity Church Vestry; as well as being the convener of the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin. She attended Vassar College, and studied American History at Radcliffe College graduating cum laude in 1965.
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William K. Bowes, Jr.
Bill Bowes has had three careers – each somehow leading to the next. Twenty Five years of investment banking in San Francisco gave him a close view of and access to Silicon Valley’s burgeoning venture capital industry. Founding U.S. Venture Partners in 1981 provided the opportunity to help create, rather than merely finance, initiatives at their earliest stage. “Venture Philanthropy” followed naturally and has included three categories of philanthropic investing: “Start-ups”; financing of initiatives inside established institutions; larger “transformative” investments in institutions at “inflection points” in their missions. The following Board and Advisory Council assignments are indicative of areas of interest: the UCSF Foundation, Exploratorium, Grace Cathedral, Environmental Defense Fund, Stanford’s Bio-X, Asian Art Museum, QB3, United Religions Initiative, Institute for Systems Biology, SF Jazz, Xoma Corporation, Creative Capital, Harvard Business School Visiting Committee, San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Bill is a San Francisco native, has a BA in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University.
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Bernard Osher
Bernard Osher, a patron of education and the arts, is well known as “the quiet philanthropist.” He created the Bernard Osher Foundation in 1977 which seeks to improve quality of life through support for higher education and the arts. Mr. Osher has pursued a successful career in business, beginning with the management of his family’s hardware and plumbing supplies store in Maine and continuing with work at Oppenheimer & Company, an investment banking firm, in New York before moving to California. There he became a founding director of World Savings Bank. Mr. Osher purchased the fine art auction house of Butterfield & Butterfield in 1970 and oversaw its growth to become the fourth largest auction house in the world. In 1999, he sold the company to eBay. Mr. Osher serves on a number of philanthropic and non-profit boards. He is an active community leader in the San Francisco Bay Area and the recipient of several honorary degrees.
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Lewis S. Ranieri
Lewis Ranieri is known for single-handedly creating the securitized mortgage market in the 1980s. His career started in the mailroom at Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street powerhouse during the 1980s. By the time of his departure in 1987, Mr. Ranieri had risen to the position of Vice Chairman. Since then Mr. Ranieri founded Hyperion Private Equity Funds and is the Chairman, CEO and President of Ranieri & Co. Inc. Mr. Ranieri serves as a trustee of Environmental Defense, as a director of The Metropolitan Opera Association and is chairman of the board of the American Ballet Theatre.
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Anthony D. Romero
Anthony Romero is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He is an attorney with a history of public-interest activism and has presided over the most successful membership growth in the ACLU’s history. In 2005, Mr. Romero was named one of Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York School of Law and has received dozens of other public service awards.
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Marion O. Sandler, Chairman of the Board
In 1963, Marion Sandler along with her husband Herbert founded Golden West Financial Corporation, a California savings and loan holding company with two offices and $34 million in assets. In 2006, when Wachovia Bank acquired the company, Golden West was the second largest savings and loan in the country and had grown to $124 billion in assets and 500 offices nationwide. Under the Sandlers’ joint leadership, Golden West was considered to be one of the best managed financial institutions in the country by many industry observers. Fortune magazine ranked Golden West as the nation’s most admired mortgage services company, and on seven separate occasions named Golden West America’s most admired savings institution. Mrs. Sandler was one of only nine women CEO’s of a Fortune 500 company. She is currently President of the Sandler Foundation, a major philanthropic organization.
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Diane B. Wilsey
Ms. Wilsey is noted for her leadership at several major cultural institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the President of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where she chaired the $200 million campaign to rebuild the de Young Museum, the largest privately-funded cultural gift ever given to the City of San Francisco. In addition, she serves on the Boards of the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and Grace Cathedral, where she also led the capital campaign. As a director of the UCSF Hospital Foundation, she is currently leading the campaign to build a new $1.7 billion Children’s, Women’s and Cancer Hospital Center at Mission Bay.
