Our People

View biographies of our Board members, Committee members, and staff.

Board of Directors

  • DIRECTOR & PRESIDENT

    Carrie Elston is a painter and arts administrator, working as the Director of Institutional Advancement for Voices of Ascension. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.F.A. from Hunter College. She is the President of The Prospect Hill Foundation, and serves on the board of the Third Street Music School Settlement and the Hunter Art Advisory Board. She was awarded the New York Art Marathon Prize, a curatorial grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and a BRIC Media Arts Fellowship. Carrie has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Bronx Museum, NARS Foundation, Artists Alliance, and the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. She currently lives in the Bronx with her family.

  • DIRECTOR & VICE PRESIDENT

    Frederick “Rick” Beinecke is a managing director of Antaeus Enterprises, Inc. He currently serves as vice president and director of The Prospect Hill Foundation, and president and director of The Sperry Fund. He is involved in numerous arts organizations, serving as president of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art, director emeritus of the New York City Ballet, director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, director emeritus of Close Encounters With Music, and trustee emeritus of The Trudeau Institute and Phillips Academy. In addition, since 1981, he has been a trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, where he is a member of the executive committee, and he was formerly a trustee and treasurer of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1966 and a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School in 1972, and served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1966 to 1969. He attained the rank of Captain, and was decorated with the Bronze Star for service during 1968 in Vietnam.

  • DIRECTOR

    Sarah Beinecke Richardson is secretary and a director of The Prospect Hill Foundation. She is also a director of The Sperry Fund, a member of the board of Antaeus Enterprises Inc., and vice president of Tangent Films Ltd., a motion picture production company founded by her husband, Craig Richardson. A resident of Jamestown, Rhode Island, she has served on the boards of Save the Bay, Community Preparatory School, the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Council for the Humanities; and as a member of the advisory boards of the International Institute of Rhode Island and The Conservation Law Foundation/RI. She also has been a trustee and co-chair of the board of Dana Hall School. She is currently a member of the board of The Mustique Charitable Foundation. Sarah received her B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University, and attended Colorado College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Factory of Visual Arts in Seattle.

  • DIRECTOR

    Ben Beinecke is an operator and investor focused on building durable businesses over a multi-generational time frame. Most recently, Ben ran Uplift, a FinTech company that financed consumers' vacations. Uplift was sold to neobank Upgrade in 2023. Prior to Uplift, Ben was the general manager at Ufora, a platform-as-a-service company funded by Two Sigma. Ben is a native New Yorker and a Director of The Prospect Hill Foundation. He's married, has three wonderful kids, and loves the outdoors.

  • DIRECTOR

    Frances Beinecke is a director of The Prospect Hill Foundation and a board member of The Sperry Fund and Antaeus Enterprises, Inc. She currently sits on the boards of World Resources Institute, Wave Hill, Climate Central, Client Earth, and Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. She worked at Natural Resources Defense Council for over thirty years, serving as executive director from 1998 to 2006 and as president from 2006 to 2015. In 2010, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Frances holds a B.A. from Yale College and a M.S. from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Among many awards and honors, she received the Yale Medal in 2009 and the Audubon Medal in 2017. She was awarded an honorary degree from Lehman College, Doctor of Humane Letters, and an honorary degree from Vermont Law School, Doctor of Laws. She is author of The World We Create: A Message of Hope for a Planet in Peril and co-authored Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action on Global Climate Change.

  • DIRECTOR

    Jacob “Jake” Beinecke is an investment associate at a private wealth management firm. He is licensed to practice law in New York and Massachusetts, and has worked previously at the Open Space Institute and on the legal team at the Acumen Fund. Prior to law school, Jake had an entirely separate career as a professional cook, mostly in San Francisco. Jake has more than ten years of experience in philanthropy and the non-profit sector, and currently serves as a trustee of several charitable organizations in addition to The Prospect Hill Foundation including the Global Greengrants Fund, Page73 Productions, and the Waterfront Alliance. He is a former Executive Director of the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association at NYU Law School (now the Social Enterprise and Startup Law Group). A life-long New Yorker, Jake graduated from The Trinity School, Columbia University, and New York University School of Law. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Julia Felsenthal.

  • DIRECTOR

    John Beinecke is a managing director of Antaeus Enterprises, Inc., a private investment company in New York. He is the president of The Prospect Hill Foundation and a director of The Sperry Fund. He is chairman of the Yale School of Drama Board of Advisors. He also serves on the board of Page73 Productions and is chairman emeritus of Lincoln Center Theater. He attained a B.A. from Yale University in 1969.

  • DIRECTOR & SECRETARY

    Elizabeth “Lizzie” Beinecke Elston is a freelance consultant focused on nonprofit capacity building. In this role she applies her expertise to improve social services with a particular focus in child welfare and youth justice organizations. Previously, Elizabeth served as the Senior Director of Data Analysis and Accountability at HeartShare St. Vincent’s Services, where she led the transformation of the 100+ year old agency into a data driven organization. Earlier in her career, Elizabeth worked as a senior analyst at the Vera Institute of Justice. There, she developed strategies to reform child welfare in New York City. She has also worked for the NYC Department of Education where she supported the roll-out of a new student assessment system throughout New York City, and on issues of gender equity and children’s access to education in Durban, South Africa, working for the Legal Resources Centre and Gender AIDS Forum. She earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Yale University in 2006 and an M.B.A. in Operations and Social Sector Management from Columbia Business School in 2014. Elizabeth is a director of The Prospect Hill Foundation, chair of the board of directors of Exalt Youth, and a member of the board of Antaeus Enterprises, Inc.

  • DIRECTOR

    Mary Elston is a scholar whose work explores Islamic education, religion and politics, and intellectual history in the modern Muslim world. She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2020. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Above Time: Reviving Tradition in Modern Egypt, which combines historical and ethnographic methods to examine conceptions of knowledge, tradition, and politics at Egypt’s al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of Islamic learning. She holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and an A.B. from Brown University. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

  • DIRECTOR

    Jesse Smith serves as a Trustee at the Rubin Museum, is a Board member of the Lineage Project, and serves as a Director at Antaeus Enterprises, Inc. He earned a B.A. from Colorado College, and has pursued further study at New York University, New York Studio School, Sculpture Center in New York, and Rhode Island School of Design.

Committee Members

  • COMMITTEE MEMBER, YOUTH PROGRAM

    Ana L. Oliveira became the President & CEO of The New York Women’s Foundation in 2006. Under her leadership, The Foundation has grown in several dimensions, establishing a new strategic plan, sponsoring landmark research reports, increasing visibility and public awareness of The Foundation's presence in NYC; and dramatically increasing the impact of The Foundation. Ana has worked in the health and human services field for over two decades, developing programs for vulnerable populations throughout NYC. She served as the Executive Director of Gay Men’s Health Crisis for over seven years, overseeing a complete turn-around of the agency. Before working at GMHC, Ana directed innovative community-based programs at Samaritan Village, the Osborne Association, Kings County and Lincoln Hospitals.

    Ana has served as a member of the New York City HIV Planning Council, in the New York City Commission on AIDS, chaired the NYC Commission for LGBTQ Runaway and Homeless Youth, and, most recently, Co-Chaired Mayor Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative. In 2005, Ana was profiled in Newsweek as "America's Best," a series highlighting ordinary individuals using their extraordinary vision on behalf of others. Her awards feature: Mutual Welfare League Certificate, (Osborne Association); Liberty Award, (Lambda Legal & Education Defense Fund); Community Service Award (Empire State Pride Agenda); the Rosie Perez Fuerza Award, (Latino Commission on AIDS), and the New York City Civil Liberties Union Liberty Award, among others. Ana was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and resides in Manhattan. She has an M.A. in Medical Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. She has been awarded an Honorary Doctor Degree by her alma matter.

  • COMMITTEE MEMBER, NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AND NON-PROLIFERATION PROGRAM

    Sharon K. Weiner is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the School of International Service at American University and a visiting researcher at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. is. A 2018 Carnegie Fellow, she is also the recipient of a Nuclear Challenge Grant from the MacArthur Foundation (2015-2016) and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Nuclear Security (2014-2015). Her book Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (MIT Press, 2011) was the winner of the 2012 Louis Brownlow award from the National Academy of Public Administration. She also is the author of the book Managing the Military: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Civil-Military Relations (Columbia University Press, 2022). Sharon has worked in both houses of Congress, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff Strategic Plans and Policy directorate, and as a program examiner with the National Security Division at the White House Office of Management and Budget. She holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT.

Staff

  • EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

    Penny Fujiko Willgerodt is the executive director of The Prospect Hill Foundation. Penny started her career in philanthropy at the Ms. Foundation for Women in 1987; joined the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation as a program officer in 1990; and the Rockefeller Family Office in the fall of 1999. Part of the start-up team to create Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, she served as vice president until the fall of 2008 when she joined The Prospect Hill Foundation. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Penny co-founded with Monique Harden, Michelle DePass and Marni Rosen, the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health, a funder collaborative initially housed at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Among other boards, she served as board president of the Weeksville Heritage Center and was a founding member and former chair of the New York Youth Justice Initiative. Currently, Penny is a board advisor to Prison Watch Sierra Leone and board chair of Clean and Healthy New York. She graduated cum laude from Yale College with a B.A. in East Asian Studies and holds a M.A. in secondary school education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

  • GRANTS MANAGER & OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR

    Dominique DeLeon has over a decade of programmatic experience in the nonprofit sector, working with the following organizations in the past: Peace is Loud, San Diego Diplomacy Council and International Women’s Media Foundation. Dominique was also a Grants Manager at Pacific Foundation Services. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Alliant International University, and a Master’s Degree in Conflict Management and Resolution from University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies.

  • DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & OPERATIONS

    Rajko has over ten years of non-profit and higher education experience. He most recently worked as the Assistant Dean of Finance and Operations at Bank Street College of Education. Rajko holds his BA from the City College of New York and an MBA from Baruch College. He is a native of Croatia and enjoys exploring New York City during his free time.