Foundation Insights
Deborah M. DiCroce, President & CEO, Named to Virginia Business Magazine Power List
Congratulations to our President and CEO on being named to the 2nd Annual Virginia 500 2021 Power List for nonprofits in the Commonwealth.
As reported in Virginia Business magazine, the Hampton Roads Community Foundation has been funneling its energy toward projects supporting COVID-19 recovery or battling racial injustice.
Over the past year, the community foundation has awarded more than $1.25 million in COVID-19 response grants. Recently, the foundation partnered with the Eastern Virginia Medical School’s M. Foscue Brock Institute for Community and Global Health to host a virtual forum about the pandemic’s impact on mental health.
In 2019, the foundation’s board adopted a Racial Equity statement stating that “advancing a more equitable and inclusive community” is key to its mission.
In April 2021, DiCroce posted a statement in response to a jury finding former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. “Let us not forget what we saw, what we heard, and what we felt,” she wrote. And in June, the foundation announced awarded nearly $1 million in grants to 30 local Black nonprofits.
Before joining the foundation in 2013, DiCroce served for 14 years as president of Tidewater Community College and for nine years as president of Piedmont Virginia Community College.
