Philanthropy Ohio announces 2014 awardees

Next week at our Fall Forum luncheon we’ll be honoring three Ohio philanthropists for their work: tickets are on sale through Wednesday (today) if you’d like to join in the celebration!

Ohio Philanthropy Award Winner: Denise San Antonio Zeman

We’ll be presenting our lifetime achievement in Ohio philanthropy award to Denise San Antonio Zeman, who recently retired from leading the Saint Luke’s Foundation for 14 years. During her presidency, she grew the foundation, expanded partnerships and increased local and national advocacy. Under her leadership, the foundation’s grantmaking budget increased from $3 million to $13 million, with further growth expected. Denise also served as co-chair of the Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot project, which brought together 18 funders to examine how to support nonprofit organizations in strategic restructuring as they grappled with unprecedented social change, economic challenges and other shifts in their operating environment in 2009. In whatever leadership role Denise played in the greater Cleveland community over the years, she was compassionate, thoughtful, curious and eager to challenge the status quo, advancing philanthropy and we congratulate her as we present her with the 2014 Ohio Philanthropy Award.

Emerging Philanthropist Award Winner: Andrea Timan

Andrea Timan will receive our Emerging Philanthropist Award next week, honoring her six-year tenure on United Way of Greater Cleveland’s Young Leaders Cabinet, the guiding body for programming that unites young professionals around philanthropy, volunteerism and advocacy. In serving as the cabinet’s co-chair, she developed and implemented the framework for the Young Leaders Corporate Chapter program in 2013, with 11 corporate chapters currently in place. Andrea’s ability to build targeted partnerships between disparate organizations, engaging individuals and showing leadership in advancing philanthropy make her the ideal and deserving emerging philanthropist. Congratulations, Andrea, on your commitment to leadership in philanthropy so early in your career!

Innovation Award Winner: Shiloh Turner

We’re also excited to be honoring Shiloh Turner, vice president of community investment at The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, with our second annual Innovation Award. Shiloh leads a new approach for addressing large challenges, called collective impact, which is a disciplined effort to bring together a cross-sector partnership aligning action around a common agenda to make large-scale community change. She took charge of establishing six backbone organizations core to the community’s success, developing a robust technical assistance program to support them as they lead community collaborations. This new way of working together has resulted in dynamic changes at Cincinnati Public Schools, leveraging investments to improve neighborhoods and establishing a community of practice, thanks to Shiloh’s leadership.

I hope you’ll join me in honoring and congratulating these extraordinary women next week at our Fall Forum.

Claudia Y.W. Herrold