2016 National Conference

Jim Canales was appointed president and trustee of the Barr Foundation in May 2014. Prior to joining Barr, he spent two decades in a variety of roles at The James Irvine Foundation in California, including service as president and chief executive officer from 2003 through 2014. Before working in philanthropy, Jim was a high school English teacher in San Francisco after earning a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. Jim has maintained a broad range of volunteer engagements. He currently serves as a trustee of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; co-chairs the Leadership Council of Boston Creates, the City’s cultural planning process; and is a member of the President’s Advisory Council at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Jim served as a trustee of Stanford University from 2006 through 2015, and he has served as chair of the boards of the College Futures Foundation, KQED Public Broadcasting, the Stanford Alumni Association, and Larkin Street Youth Services, and as vice chair of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He is also a co-founder and former board chair of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Jim’s writing on a range of topics has appeared in The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Huffington Post, among other outlets.

Carrie Pickett-Erway is President/CEO of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. Drawing on nearly two decades of service in the nonprofit sector, she uses her experience in community organizing, organizational development, and diversity, inclusion and equity to develop and support an engaged workforce that is committed to learning, continuous improvement and performance excellence. "All in, every day," is a phrase she uses to describe the Community Foundation's team. Her community involvements include past and present service on numerous committees and boards including the Council of Michigan Foundations and Western Michigan University Homer D. Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. In 2013, she was honored with membership in the WMU College of Health and Human Services’ Outstanding Alumni Academy of the School of Social Work.

Sylvia’s work is driven by a longstanding commitment to social justice and to serving children, families, and communities. She has been active in the struggle for equal rights and opportunities at the local and national levels, and has received numerous awards for her civil rights work and community leadership. In the course of her work at the Fund, Sylvia has helped spark several major local initiatives. For example, she played a lead role in establishing the San Francisco Beacon Initiative, a public-private collaboration to turn schools into community centers for youth development. She also is a founder of the Oakland-based Coaching Corps, which aims to level the playing field in sports opportunities for girls and low-income youth in California. Sylvia has also served as board chair — and, in many cases, co-founder — of numerous national, state and local organizations, including Asian Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, the Foundation Consortium, Family Support America, Northern California Grantmakers and the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. She currently serves as trustee of BoardSource, Coaching Corps, Spark SF Public Schools and the Teaching Channel.

Before joining the Fund, Sylvia was a program executive in education and health at the San Francisco Foundation. She taught and administered programs for more than a decade at the elementary, secondary and university levels, both in the U.S. and in the People’s Republic of China. She also directed a community-based nonprofit agency providing educational services to immigrant and low-income youth in San Francisco's Mission District. Sylvia earned a Ph.D. in educational administration and policy from Stanford University, a master’s degree in teaching at Reed College and a bachelor’s in history at Stanford University. She co-authored the multi-ethnic book, Got Me a Story to Tell: Five Children Tell About Their Lives, and wrote Careers in the Classroom, published by Teachers College Press.

Kathleen P. Enright is the president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. A national coalition of grantmakers, GEO promotes grantmaker practices that improve nonprofit results. Kathleen speaks and writes regularly on issues of nonprofit and grantmaker effectiveness at national and regional gatherings of foundation executives and trustees.  Previously, Enright served as the group director, marketing and communications for BoardSource, a project manager for the National Association of Development Organizations Research Foundation and communications specialist for Lexmark International. She currently serves on the advisory boards of The Center for Effective Philanthropy and the Midge Smith Center for Evaluation Effectiveness. She holds a bachelors’ degree in English from the Universityof Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign and a master’s of public administration from The George Washington University.