Since its founding in 1991, the Johnson Scholarship Foundation has been guided by talented and passionate individuals from all walks of life. Our Board of Directors is comprised of accomplished individuals from the fields of education, finance, and business. We are very proud of this roster and use their expertise in advancing our mission of assisting disadvantaged individuals in obtaining employment through education.
Malcolm Macleod was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1951. He obtained a B.A. in English (Honors) in 1975 and was awarded a Lord Beaverbrook Scholarship to study law at the University of New Brunswick.
Malcolm was admitted to the New Brunswick Bar in 1978 and to the Nova Scotia Bar in 1979. He joined the firm of Patterson, Smith, Mathews and Grant as an associate and practiced with that firm and its successors for over 25 years. During that time he served as managing partner and chair of the firm’s litigation department. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1997.
Malcolm joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation as a trustee in 1993. He was elected secretary in 1995 and served in that position until 2001, when he was elected President and Chief Executive Officer. He retired from that role in April 2020 and accepted the Board’s invitation to serve as Chair of the Board of Directors.
Sherry Salway Black has worked for more than 40 years in American Indian issues at the American Indian Policy Review Commission; Indian Health Service, First Nations Development Institute, the National Congress of American Indians, and as a private consultant. She currently serves on the boards of directors of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation (Vice Chair), First Peoples Fund (Chairperson), and as a trustee for the Native American Agriculture Fund. She also serves on the board of trustees for the National Indian Child Welfare Association. She was appointed by President Obama in 2011 to the President’s Advisory Committee on Financial Capability and in 2013 to the President’s Advisory Committee on Financial Capability for Young Americans.
Past board positions include the Hitachi Foundation (Director Emeritus), Council on Foundations for seven years where she served as Treasurer and on the Executive, Governance, and Membership Committees. She is also a past board member of Prosperity Now (formerly CFED), Trillium Asset Management Corporation, American Indian Business Leaders, Native Americans in Philanthropy and Women and Philanthropy. She served two terms on the board of governors for Honoring Excellence in the Governance of Tribal Nations at Harvard University.
Ms. Black has a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor Degree from East Stroudsburg University where in 2013 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2016, Ms. Black received a Special Distinguished Leadership Award from the National Congress of American Indians and in 2019 received the John W. Gardner Leadership Award from the Independent Sector.
She is Oglala Lakota and is originally from South Dakota. She and her husband, Ron Black, a citizen of the Seneca Nation, live in Falmouth, VA.
Bea joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation Board in 2013. She serves as the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and College Ombudsman at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. She is committed to postsecondary access for students with disabilities, students from underrepresented population, and first-generation college students. She is an active member of the disability service professionals’ community serving as a past president of the national organization, the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD). She served as a member of Board of Directors of the AHEAD as well as its Florida affiliate—FL-AHEAD. She is the 2011 recipient of AHEAD’s highest honor, the Ronald E. Blosser Dedicated Service Award, the 2016 and 2018 Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award, and the first recipient of the Fredrick A. Fay Pioneer Award from Florida State University. She also serves as a Director on the Board of the Center for Independent Living of North Central Florida.
Bea is an active member of her church and is always involved in the ministries of Education and Disability Access. Together with her husband, Caleb, they coordinated efforts to church and secondary school building her hometown in Nigeria. They are now coordinating efforts to sustaining the school which is focused on a better preparation of students and increasing their postsecondary opportunities.
Bea and Caleb are blessed with three adult children and one granddaughter.
Bill Corwin joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation Board in 2018. He is the founder of Mission Velocity, a consulting firm dedicated to helping nonprofits accelerate and grow their impact. He has more than 20 years of nonprofit leadership and consulting experience. Most recently he was the Vice President of U.S. Programs for Save the Children, responsible for overseeing domestic programming for over 300,000 children annually in the U.S., with a staff of 700 and a budget of more than $50 million.
Prior to Save the Children, he was President of Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, an organization with seven locations serving deaf and hard of hearing children and a past grant recipient of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation. He also has been the executive director of two local CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) programs in California, and he served for seven years as the Chief Development Officer for National CASA. He formerly served on the boards of both the California CASA and National CASA Associations.
He now advises a wide range of nonprofits on fundraising, strategic planning and program development. Prior to his nonprofit work he was an attorney in private practice, the leader of a legal services program for homeless youth and a Deputy DA with the Santa Clara County (CA) District Attorney’s Office. He received his B.A. degree in history from Brown University and his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife Jennifer and their two children.
Robert A. Krause has served as a member of the JSF Board of Directors since 2013. In April of 2020, he joined the JSF Staff to become the 4th Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation.
A Florida native, he graduated from Stetson University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and studied accounting at Florida Southern College. He holds a CPA license in the state of Florida.
Robert founded an agricultural service company in central Florida in 1990. For three decades, as President and CEO of Krause Services, he provided business consultation and botanical services to citrus growers.
He served for a decade on the Peace River Valley Citrus Growers Association in Arcadia, holding the positions of president, vice president and treasurer. He was named Businessman of the Year in 2007 by the Hardee County Chamber of Commerce. He also was a member of the Hardee County Economic Development Council. From 2008-2010, he served as Finance Committee Chairman of First Baptist Church of Wauchula.
David Blaikie is a lawyer and a member of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. He practiced civil litigation with the Nova Scotia law firm of Patterson Palmer. David teaches law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and is the coauthor or editor of four books, most recently, Why Good Lawyers Matter (with The Honourable Thomas A. Cromwell and Darrel Pink, eds., Irwin Law) and Halsbury’s Laws of Canada, The Law of Damages (with Samantha Orr, LexisNexis).
He holds undergraduate degrees in philosophy and law from Gordon College and Dalhousie Law School, and graduate degrees in theology and law from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Law School.
David joined the board of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation in 2004. For many years he was a director and board chair of the Colchester Residential Services Society, a non-profit organization in Nova Scotia that provides housing and care for disabled persons. He is a member of St. David’s Presbyterian Church, Halifax.
David is married to Gay and they have two daughters, Laura and Kathryn, and one granddaughter, Madeline Grace.
Financial analyst Mike Miller joined BMO Capital Markets after earning a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts in economics from Western University. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst and has the Institute for Corporate Directors Designation. He worked in BMO’s wealth division, managed equity portfolios, spent 10 years as Director of Equity Research and 10 more as Global Head of Equities before retiring from BMO in May 2015. While in research management, BMO’s Canadian equity investment research was ranked number one overall by Brendan Wood International for 10 years in a row. He now teaches Finance at McMaster University’s DeGroote MBA School.
At BMO, he led a charitable initiative, Equity Through Education, that raised $15 million dollars over 10 years to provide educational scholarships for women, those with disabilities, Indigenous communities and the economically disadvantaged. He has been on the boards of the Toronto CFA Society, the Investment Industry Association of Canada and the Bank of Montreal Pension Fund. For the past three years, he has chaired the annual Leadership Campaign for the United Way Halton and Hamilton and is a board member and chair of the Investment Committee of the Oakville Community Foundation.
He joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation Board in 2018. He lives in Oakville, Ontario. He and his wife Susan have two daughters attending university.
Richard A. Krause joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation at its inception in 1991 as a Trustee and Treasurer. In March, 2015 he retired as Director and Treasurer at age 75, but continues to work as the Chief Financial Officer.
Prior to working with the Foundation, he served as Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer for Rinker Materials Corporation from 1963 through 1988 and Gee & Jenson Engineers-Architects-Planners from 1989 through 2003.
His primary responsibilities at the Foundation include management and oversight of the accounting, finance, banking and investment activities.
Graduating from Stetson University in 1963 with B.A. and M.A. degrees, he moved to West Palm Beach. In addition to his work at the Foundation, he is a Trustee at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Director at the Marshall E. Rinker, Sr. Foundation and actively involved with First Baptist Church in Wauchula, Florida, where he now lives.
He has six married children, twenty-one grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren.
Sharon Wood came to the Johnson Scholarship Foundation in August of 2002. As Office Manager/Program Officer, Sharon has primary responsibility for the operations of the Foundation office. She assists the CEO in the day to day management and control of the grant programs by handling the logistics, the record keeping, and much of the communication between the Foundation and its grantees. Her responsibilities also include assisting the Chief Financial Officer in handling financial transactions and maintaining appropriate records.
Sharon brings a diverse range of experience to the Foundation, including teaching high school English, co-owning and managing a horticultural brokerage, and 15 years of experience as a legal assistant to a lawyer specializing in corporate law and real estate transactions.
A graduate of West Virginia University, Sharon and her husband have lived in Florida since 1978. They are the proud parents of 2 adult children and the happy grandparents of 4 grandchildren.
Lady Hereford joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation as Program Specialist in April 2017. In this role, she is responsible for assisting in improving the Foundation’s grant making, its communication and its profile within the independent sector.
Prior to joining the Foundation, she was a writer in the university relations and marketing department at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and before that she was a staff writer for the Palm Beach Post. She previously worked as a print journalist in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was the co-recipient of a national Education Writers Association award. She is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, and a graduate of Auburn University, where she majored in journalism.
Locally, her involvements include the Palm Beach chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, the Lake Worth High School Alumni Foundation and Lake Worth Dollars for Scholars.
Hugh joined BMO Capital Markets, one of Canada’s leading investment firms, in 1969 and has since specialized in the Financial Services sector. Hugh has been regarded as the leading analyst of Canadian banks, not only by the investment community, but also by governments and corporations. Over the years Hugh has published thousands of financial sector research commentaries and appeared before and been involved with numerous private and public organizations.
Between 1980 and 2000, Hugh was consistently ranked first among bank analysts by the Brendan Wood International survey. He took on the role of Executive Managing Director and Financial Sector Strategist in 2000 and retired in 2011.
Hugh became a member of the Board of Directors of predecessor firm Burns Fry Ltd. in 1980 and, by the time of its merger with Nesbitt Thomson in 1994, was a Vice Chairman and chair of the Audit Committee.
Hugh is a past Director of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation. He is married to Linda, has three children and maintains homes in Mississauga Ontario and Nova Scotia.
Hugh holds a Bachelor of Commerce (1967) and an MBA (1969) from Dalhousie University and a CFA designation.
Hannah Deadman-Arnst is a communications consultant with expertise in writing, public relations, social media marketing, and strategic communications. She loves helping organizations impact their communities — working with nonprofits, the government, and small & social good businesses in life sciences, arts & culture, education, and tourism.
Her 7+ years of nonprofit marketing experience and journalism background have allowed Hannah to now serve as a thoughtful partner — earning strong, measurable results through proven strategies and compelling content.
Her past experience includes serving as communications manager at the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County; handling PR, writing, and photography for Loggerhead Marinelife Center; and reporting for the Palm Beach Daily News.
While she calls South Florida home, Hannah travels and works remotely in her RV with her husband and two huskies.
Sanford Howard, Vice President and firm principal of Guthrie, Jacobs & Eubanks, P.A., joined the Johnson Scholarship Foundation as a consultant in 2010. He serves as an outside consultant to the Foundation’s Audit & Risk Committee.
A Florida native and graduate of the University of Florida, he has worked for Guthrie, Jacobs & Eubanks since 1978. He is also active in his church and in the community. He has been a member of the West Palm Beach Kiwanis Club since 1980, serving as a board member and officer of the organization’s Scholarship Foundation.
He and his wife, Janet, have two sons and one daughter.
I. King Jordan Jr. was the first deaf president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world’s only university with all programs and services designed specifically for students who are deaf. He served as president from the time he was appointed following the Deaf President Now revolution in March, 1988 until December 31, 2006 when he stepped down to become a full time advocate for the rights and abilities of people who are deaf and people with disabilities.
King received his B.A. degree from Gallaudet University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee, all in psychology. He is a native of Glen Riddle, PA, and served four years in the U.S. Navy. He has been a visiting scholar in Scotland, Poland and France and speaks frequently about the importance of communication.
King is a member of several boards, including Educational Credit Management Corporation and Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities.
He holds twelve honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards including the U.S. Presidential Citizen’s Medal and Washingtonian of the Year. He travels frequently and speaks to various audiences about the rights and abilities of people who are deaf and people with disabilities and the importance of communication, attitude and opportunity in advancing those rights.
King and his wife Linda divide their time between West River, MD and Washington, D.C. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.
Kristine (Kris) Wiest Webb is a Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of North Florida (UNF). Before her retirement in 2017, Kris served multiple roles at UNF that included professorial work in the Department of Exceptional, Deaf, and Interpreter Education and a joint appointment as Director of the UNF Disability Resource Center (now Student Accessibility Services). Under her direction, the DRC experienced tremendous growth in the numbers of students who used accommodations and services, and the number of successful graduates increased 10 times the number of students who graduated a decade earlier. During her time as Director, she initiated several programs that helped students find career direction and employment after graduation. She was a co-founder of Project THRIVE, a group of over 160 matriculating students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and the students in THRIVE have developed employment seminars, presented trainings about ASD, and have participated in internships and job shadowing.
Kris has written or edited six books about the transition process to postsecondary education and employment including the Handbook of Adolescent Transition Education for Youth with Disabilities. In addition, she has written and co-written four monographs to assist individuals with disabilities as they transition to adult living and numerous articles and publications about transition. Kris is a Past-President of the International Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT), an organization dedicated to improving life for adolescents and adults with disabilities, and she was the recipient of the DCDT Oliver Kolstoe Award in 2020. She was the 2014 Distinguished Professor at the University of North Florida. Before coming to UNF, Kris served as the Director of the Florida Network: Information and Services for Adults and Adolescents with Disabilities housed at the University of Florida. Before her own transition to higher education, Kris was a high school teacher for 17 years in Colorado and New Mexico.
Richard B. Williams (Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne) is a passionate and committed advocate and fierce champion of Native education in the United States. From 1997-2012, he served as president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, a national non-profit scholarship fundraising organization for American Indian students attending tribal colleges and universities which provide culturally based education and are run by the tribes. He grew up in Crawford, Nebraska, and graduated from Crawford High School in 1969. He was raised by his grandmother Louisa Star Nelson and his great-grandmother Ida White Eyes.
He was the first American Indian to graduate from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, receiving a B.A. (magna cum laude) in 1975. Concurrently, he finished an independent study program at the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in Boulder, Colorado, where he continued his work as a paralegal after graduation. In 1987, he completed a M.A. in educational administration (Summa Cum Laude) at the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
He has dedicated himself to the goal of American Indian education throughout his career. At CU-Boulder, he directed several initiatives, including the American Indian Upward Bound Program, Director of Minority Affairs and the University Learning Center (now the Student Academic Service Center [SASC]).
He is a devoted father of four children and grandfather of eight grandchildren. He resides in Broomfield, Colorado, with his wife, Sally Carufel-Williams (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe/Dakota).
Johnson Scholarship Foundation
One N. Clematis Street, Suite 307
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
The Johnson Scholarship Foundation is a private Foundation. It does not make individual grants. All scholarships and grants are made through selected institutions. The Foundation’s support of these causes is delivered through a variety of scholarships and grant programs, which are described in this site.
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