Title: President and CEO
Organization: Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties
Leslie Lilly is the President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties. She is a Florida native and returned to her home state in October 2007, accepting a position at the Community Foundation as Vice President for Programs at the Community Foundation. During her tenure as Vice President for Programs she was instrumental in the development of several initiatives, including:
- The affordable housing initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fund at the Community Foundation
- The Digital Public Square Initiative, a user-driven, interactive website designed to serve as a virtual public square for Palm Beach County, supported by a civic leadership grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
She also managed over $5 million in annual grant distributions and partnered with area nonprofits to address critical social and economic issues facing Palm Beach and Martin Counties.
Prior to joining the Community Foundation, Ms. Lilly served as founding President and CEO of The Foundation for Appalachian Ohio (FAO) and previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Foundation for the Mid South, a three-state community foundation serving Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
She is an acknowledged and accomplished state and national leader, author and spokesperson in the field of philanthropy.
She previously served on the national Council of Foundation’s (COF) Community Foundation Leadership Team, has served as a trustee and Vice President of the A Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and as a board member of the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, Southeastern Council of Foundations and Women and Foundations/Corporate Philanthropy. She received a German Marshall TransAtlantic Community Foundation Fellowship in 2007, was a Salzburg Fellow and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation International Fellow. She is a graduate of Leadership Palm Beach, Class of 2009.
As part of her fellowship experiences, Lilly travel to Southern Africa, Latin America, and Europe to study philanthropy in developing regions. Early in her career, she was awarded a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in recognition of her work to develop job opportunities for women in eleven southern states.
