The Jacob & Terese Hershey Foundation Welcomes New CEO Elizabeth Love
The Board of Directors of the Jacob & Terese Hershey Foundation is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Love has joined us as our first Chief Executive Officer. Elizabeth has extensive experience in the philanthropic sector and maintains deep expertise in the Foundation’s areas of focus, including protecting natural resources and advancing reproductive rights. “We are so excited to have Elizabeth join us as CEO. She is an accomplished and visionary leader with a track record of deploying philanthropic resources to achieve measurable impact in the community. With Elizabeth at the helm, the Directors are ready to step into a new chapter of strategic philanthropy” said Jeffrey Hershey, President of the Jake & Terese Hershey Foundation.
Elizabeth has held leadership positions in the philanthropic, public and nonprofit sectors, most recently serving as Senior Program Officer at Houston Endowment, where she led environmental and health-focused grantmaking initiatives for 11 years. Known as a strategic thinker and a convener with deep relationships across the region, highlights of her work at Houston Endowment include bringing stakeholders together to launch LINK Houston, the Greater Houston Flood Mitigation Consortium, the SPARK Park Desert Initiative, the One Breath Partnership and the Improving Maternal Health collaborative.
Prior to joining Houston Endowment, Elizabeth served as the first Director of Harris County Public Health’s Office of Policy and Planning. There she led strategic planning activities concerning health promotion, air and water quality, neighborhood conditions, climate change and infectious disease, and oversaw the department’s legislative affairs, community-based assessment processes and outcomes evaluation framework. Elizabeth started her career in 1997 as a fellow for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Elizabeth received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rice University and a master’s degree from the University of Texas School of Public Health. She currently serves on the boards of LINK Houston and The Funders Network, a national philanthropy-serving organization that focuses on the intersection of equity, the environment and the economy, and is a past president of the Junior League of Houston. Elizabeth was the recipient of the 2020 Gregg Cook Award for Excellence in Environmental Leadership from the Texas Energy Summit.
“I am honored for the opportunity to partner with the Directors of the Jacob & Terese Hershey Foundation to position the institution for a new phase of philanthropic impact” says Love. “The foundation’s areas of focus are particularly relevant today, and we will work with urgency and resolve to bring our resources to bear in addressing them.”