The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) today announced the appointment of the first female president and chief executive officer (CEO) in its nearly 160-year history. Phoebe Boyer, executive director of the Robertson Foundation, will succeed Richard Buery, Jr. as of Oct. 1.
Buery departed the New York City-based education and poverty-fighting organization in February to become Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy mayor for special initiatives, focused on universal pre-kindergarten. Chief Operating Officer Bill Weisberg has been serving as interim CEO.
Buery was the first black CEO of the organization and served just more than four years while Boyer will be the organization’s 11th president and CEO and the first woman to hold the positions.
Boyer is executive director of the Robertson Foundation, a $1 billion family foundation created by Julian H. Robertson, Jr. and his family that takes a “targeted approach to supporting critical national issues, including education reform.” She was executive director of the poverty-fighting Tiger Foundation, also founded by Julian Robertson, for 12 years.
Boyer also served as assistant executive director at Inwood House in Upper Manhattan, where she spent four years working to help distressed teens take charge of their lives by educating them in making sound decisions, prevent pregnancy and building self-esteem. She also managed emergency prison construction and other related projects for the New York City Department of Corrections and was deputy director of the Management Analysis Unit for the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Bridges. She holds a master’s degree in public-nonprofit management from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
“This is an incredible opportunity to be part of an organization with a long legacy of strengthening families, particularly at this time when our city is so focused on helping children escape poverty and eliminating the achievement gap,” Boyer said in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“Phoebe has long embraced the kind of mission-driven, results-oriented thinking that is a cornerstone of what we’re doing at Children’s Aid,” said Mark Edmiston, chairman of the organization’s Board of Trustees. “The board believes she is the right choice to propel forward our Keeping the Promise vision and the strategy of building a cradle-through-college pathway for children,” he said.
Founded in 1855, Children’s Aid Society reported total revenue of $117 million in the most recent fiscal year (ending June 30, 2013), including $58 million in government fees and contracts and $19 million in contributions, gifts and grants. Some of its largest contributors were the Robin Hood Foundation ($3.3 million) and the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development ($5.6 million).
Annual compensation for Boyer was not included in the announcement regarding her appointment. Buery earned total compensation of $438,629, including a base of $387,000, according to the organization’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2013.
