Jennifer Leonard's Bio

Jennifer Leonard is the president and chief executive officer of Rochester Area Community Foundation, a permanent community endowment that helps charitable donors become catalysts for positive change. Since Jennifer assumed her present position in 1993, the Community Foundation has grown six-fold, and last year distributed more than $17 million in grants to improve the lives of people living in greater Rochester’s eight-county region.

Jennifer led her field from 2004-06 as chair of the national Community Foundations Leadership Team. She helped develop the first national standards for community foundations and oversaw their implementation from 2001-04. Before coming to Rochester, Jennifer served as a national writer and consultant in philanthropy and as vice president of the California Community Foundation in Los Angeles. She also held national positions with the American Heart Association and The Grantsmanship Center.

Jennifer is a board member of the Center for Governmental Research and is the Genesee Valley Club's first female president. The Women’s Council of the Rochester Business Alliance selected Jennifer as its 2010 Athena Award recipient. In 2007, Rochester Business Journal named Jennifer one of “20 businesspeople who have made the biggest impact on Rochester over the past 20 years.”

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College, Jennifer was a 1974 Coro Fellow in Public Affairs and holds an urban studies master's degree from Occidental College. She lives in Brighton with husband David Cay Johnston, an author, lecturer and former New York Times reporter.