Siebert Lutheran Foundation has named Charlotte John-Gomez as its new president and chief operations officer.
John-Gomez was previously director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Milwaukee office of Community Planning and Development, where she was responsible for administering HUD grants to communities and grantees throughout the state.
Before that, John-Gomez led the Layton Boulevard West Neighbors, Inc. as executive director for 16 years.
She joins the Siebert Lutheran Foundation in the newly-created position of president and COO. The addition of the president role is part of the Milwaukee-based foundation’s efforts to grow its impact in the region and help find longer-term solutions to the causes it has historically supported.
Under the new leadership structure, Brenda Skelton is staying on as CEO.
John-Gomez said her background as a nonprofit leader gives her insight into the experience of the foundation’s grant recipients.
“I know what it’s like to be really focused on the mission, but also needing to know where the next payroll check is going to come from,” she said. “I know what it means to be resilient and to plan for some rough times and to be strategic about planning for the future so the organization can be sustainable over time.”
John-Gomez said a large part of her role will include convening stakeholders, including community partners and grant recipients, to help ensure the foundation’s grants have a tangible impact on the community.
“The foundation recently completed a strategic planning process where they identified some strategies to really address some of the core causes of poverty and find ways to move people forward to self-sufficiency,” John-Gomez said said. “In my role, I’m going to help convene different partners and grantees to think about how we can do this in a very thoughtful way and how we can measure the impact of the dollars that are being invested in those efforts.”
The foundation’s current endowment is about $100 million and its main funding priorities include church ministries, education in urban and low-income areas, and services and solutions to generational poverty.
The foundation was established by Albert F. Siebert, the founder of Milwaukee Electric Tool Company. The foundation later sold its interest in Milwaukee Electric Tool Company to Amstar Corporation in 1976 and today operates as an independent foundation under a trust agreement. Since then, the foundation has funded more than $125 million in grantmaking.
