Board of Directors

Michael W. Grebe
Chairman

Michael W. Grebe is president and CEO of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Prior to his selection, Mr. Grebe was a member of the foundation’s board of directors for six years.

Before joining the Bradley Foundation, Mr. Grebe was the chairman and CEO of Foley & Lardner, one of the country’s largest law firms, where he was a partner for more than 25 years. Mr. Grebe concentrated his practice on corporate and financial law.

Mr. Grebe is a former member and president of the board of regents for the University of Wisconsin and past member and chairman of the board of visitors for the United States Military Academy. He has served as a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army, and as a member of the Wisconsin Board of Veterans Affairs, and was a member of the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the board of directors of the Milwaukee Brewers. He is a member of the board of directors of Oshkosh Truck Corporation and the Church Mutual Insurance Company. He served as a member of the Republican National Committee for 18 years, and is a former general counsel of the RNC.

Mr. Grebe received his bachelor's degree with honors from the United States Military Academy and his law degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and was Note and Comment Editor of the University of Michigan Law Review. He served in the United States Army and was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and two Bronze Stars (one for valor) for his service in Vietnam.

Mr. Grebe lives in Milwaukee and is married to Patricia Perry. He has two children, a son and a daughter.

Heather HigginsHeather Higgins
Vice Chairman

Heather Higgins is president and director of the Randolph Foundation in New York City. She is a a co-founder of the Alliance for Charitable reform, president and CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, and a board member of the Independent Women’s Forum, the Hoover Institution, The Philanthropy Roundtable, and a number of UBS’s mutual funds. In addition, she is a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Previously, Ms. Higgins was a portfolio manager and vice president at U.S. Trust. Prior to working in finance, she was an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and assistant editor at the Public Interest; Ms. Higgins continues to write and offer frequent commentary on radio and television.

Kim Dennis
Secretary

Kim Dennis is president of the Searle Freedom Trust, a grantmaking foundation established by the late Daniel C. Searle to advance public policy research on issues of limited government and individual liberty. From 2001 through 2005, she directed the National Research Initiative, a Searle-funded program of the American Enterprise Institute. From 1991 to 1996, Ms. Dennis served as executive director of The Philanthropy Roundtable. Her previous experience includes over five years with the John M. Olin Foundation. She has also held a variety of positions with nonprofit educational and policymaking organizations, including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Pacific Research Institute.

Ms. Dennis began her career as a social worker in northern Maine. She is president of the board of DonorsTrust, a trustee of the Earhart Foundation, and a director of PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center. She has also served on the boards of the W. H. Brady Foundation, the Independent Women’s Forum, and the Indiana Policy Review, and as a member of the National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal.

Ms. Dennis lives in northern Virginia with her two children.

Donn WeinbergDonn Weinberg
Treasurer

Donn Weinberg currently serves as chairman of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. Prior to 2010, he was vice president and trustee of the foundation. He has been with the Weinberg Foundation since 1993, serving first as corporate counsel and then, after becoming vice president in 2002, focusing on grantmaking and overseeing the foundation’s real estate portfolio.

In private law practice from 1978 to 1992, he specialized in general civil and medical malpractice litigation. Mr. Weinberg is currently a board member of the Baltimore Community Foundation and the Jewish Funders Network. Since September 2007, Mr. Weinberg has been a regular volunteer singer-entertainer at older adult residential- and day-care facilities in the Baltimore area.

He received his J.D. from the University of Baltimore, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review, and his B.A. in communications and philosophy from George Washington University.

Ana Thompson
Finance Committee Chair

Ana Thompson is executive director of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, which supports entrepreneurial organizations working in the areas of K-12 education reform, human services, and health.

Prior to joining the Schwab Foundation in 2001, Ms. Thompson served as chief financial and administrative officer for Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, which provides housing and money-management services for multiply diagnosed individuals, welfare-to-work programs, and other social service programs. 

From 2004 to 2007, Ms. Thompson served on the board of directors of the Foundation Financial Officers Group (FFOG); currently, she serves on FFOG’s administrative program committee. She has also worked in consulting with Deloitte Consulting and First Manhattan Consulting Group, where she advised clients in finance, cost analysis, risk-adjusted pricing models, and business process redesign.

Ms. Thompson holds an MBA from Stanford Business School and a B.A. in Slavic Studies from Harvard University.

James Piereson

James Piereson

James Piereson is president of the William E. Simon Foundation in New York City and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Mr. Piereson was executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation from 1985 until the end of 2005 when, following longstanding plans, the foundation disbursed its remaining assets and closed its doors. He previously served on the political science faculties of several prominent universities, including Iowa State University (1974), Indiana University (1975), and the University of Pennsylvania (1976-1982), where he taught courses in the field of United States government and political theory.

Mr. Piereson serves on the boards of several other tax-exempt institutions, including the Center for Individual Rights and DonorsTrust. He is the author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism and co-author of Political Tolerance and American Democracy.

Jeff D. Sandefer

Jeff Sandefer is a master teacher at the Acton School of Business. A serial entrepreneur, Mr. Sandefer’s latest venture was Sandefer Capital Partners, an energy investment firm that held over $1 billion in assets. For the last 20 years, Mr. Sandefer has also taught entrepreneurship at the graduate level. Six years ago, Mr. Sandefer and a group of successful entrepreneurs left a nationally recognized program they had built at the University of Texas to start the Acton School of Business.

For four consecutive years, Acton was rated among the top MBA programs in the country by the Princeton Review, which declared Acton’s students to be the “most competitive” MBAs in America and rated the faculty in the top three in the nation. While at the University of Texas, Mr. Sandefer was voted five times by students as UT’s Outstanding Teacher and was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top entrepreneurship professors in the United States. He has served for over a decade on Harvard University’s visiting committee and as chair of the university’s academic research committee. He is a director of National Review magazine, formerly served as chairman of the Acton Institute of Religion and Liberty, and was a member of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 21st Century Commission on Higher Education.