The Kresge Foundation today announced that Anna Blanding and Dr. Linda Hill have been appointed to its 12-member Board of Trustees, which serves as the governing body overseeing the foundation’s financial management, operations, grantmaking and social investing.

Anna Blanding is a seasoned investment professional whose broad experience spans finance, philanthropy, endowment management, federal and state policy, institutional investing and community development. She is a recognized expert on impact investing, and her work was most recently published in two Yale School of Management case studies. This year, Blanding was the invited keynote for the Donald H. Ogilvie colloquium, “The Evolution of Business and Society.”

Blanding currently works as chief investment officer (CIO) at ConnCORP, a Connecticut-based impact enterprise whose mission is to drive transformational economic development through strategic investment in commercial and residential real estate and scalable businesses. In her current role, Blanding co-leads the company’s signature $225 million mixed-use sustainable real estate development located in an historic African American community, steps from Yale. The project will serve as an institutional anchor to boost revitalization of New Haven, Connecticut. Blanding also heads ConnCORP’s Economic Justice Fund, investing in women and BIPOC-led companies.

Prior to ConnCORP, Blanding was deputy CIO at Choate Rosemary Hall where she oversaw a $350 million endowment and deployed capital across all private and public asset classes. Her previous experience also includes serving as an investment officer at The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a $4.2 billion endowment.

Blanding commits her talent and time to various philanthropic pursuits including as a trustee and investment committee member of Yale University Dwight Hall and the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund. She is a delegate to Yale’s Alumni Association Assembly. She is an advisor to New Majority Capital and on the board of directors for Capital for Change and the Angelman Syndrome Foundation. Blanding is a national advocate for children with rare neurological diseases and the increased need for inclusive clinical trials and neuroinflammation research.

Blanding earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in business administration from Yale University and Yale School of Management, respectively.

“Anna’s career trajectory – from nonprofit endowment management to impact investing to economic and community development to philanthropy – is an impressive one,” said Cecilia Muñoz, Kresge board chair. “Her deep experience across these disciplines will be invaluable to the board as we continue to grow our philanthropic impact, endowment and community development investments. She has shown throughout her career a commitment to creating equitable communities and innovating the financial and impact investing sectors. Anna will be a critical voice as we think through how to invest and use financial tools for social good.”

Dr. Linda Hill currently serves as the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), where she also serves as faculty chair of its Leadership Initiative. Hill is an internationally recognized authority and academic on the topics of leadership and innovation. Hill’s research and consulting focuses on leadership development, leading change and innovation and implementing global strategies.

She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world in 2013 and 2021 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015. Hill is the author or co-author of several award-winning articles and books including: Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader, and Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership.

Hill co-founded Paradox Strategies, an advisory and research firm that advises organizations and boards on leadership, innovation and diversity and inclusion. Hill is co-creator of the Innovation Quotient and re:Route, and she co-founded InnovationForce, a SaaS company using AI and machine learning to accelerate the process of innovation. It was named by Fast Company as a 2023 “Innovative Company to Watch.”

Hill is a member of the Board of Directors of Relay Therapeutics and is on the Board of Trustees of the ArtCenter College of Design and of Brigham & Women’s Hospital. She is also a member of the Team8 Fintech Strategic Committee. She serves on the advisory boards of several organizations including the American Repertory Theater, the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Eight Inc., the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. She also sits on the board of the Global Citizens Initiative, Inc. and is a Special Representative to the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College.

Hill completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at HBS and earned a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences at The University of Chicago. She has a bachelor’s in arts in psychology from Bryn Mawr College

“Linda is a foremost expert on leadership, organizational management and innovation, and she uses her research and deep expertise in these areas to inform economic development and how to improve the lives of those who live in disinvested communities,” said Muñoz. “For most of her career, Linda has focused on business and societal challenges that require systemic approaches and solutions, which is exactly the sort of perspective Kresge’s Board of Trustees seeks as we have always been a philanthropy focused on large-scale systems change. I very much look forward to Linda helping Kresge navigate how to become an even more effective organization.”

Both Blanding and Hill will serve four-year terms.