Gertrude J. Spilka Executive Director A founding director of OMG, Gertrude J. Spilka ("Gerri") has over twenty-five years experience advising public and nonprofit organizations and national foundations on program development and evaluation, strategic planning, organizational restructuring and policy. The areas of her work include the arts, education reform, communications policy, community building and non-profit management. Much of her recent work has investigated effective policy and systems change efforts across various fields. During her tenure at OMG, Gerri has advised on program strategy and directed numerous evaluations. Her recent projects include: Evaluations of the Ford Foundation's national Electronic Media Policy Portfolio, and of its Arts Education Initiative in eleven cities, both for the Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program. Advising The Philadelphia Foundation with its regional repositioning and with the development of a new grantmaking and evaluation strategy. Assisting the Heinz Endowments with the development of grantmaking program logic models for their Arts and Culture Program and their new interdisciplinary Civic Design Program. Conducting an evaluation of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's new Rural Policy Rural People Initiative that aims to build a rural policy infrastructure, and of its earlier pilot, Networks for Rural Policy Development, which increased policy know-how, networking, and strategic communications capacities in a Central Appalachian network of organizations and across a national group of associations to influence more effective rural economic development policy. Advising with the creation of a cluster and implementation strategy for the William Penn Foundation's Schuylkill River Watershed Restoration grantmaking. A multi-year national evaluation of the Lumina Foundation for Education's Program for College Access and Success in nine cities across the US. Gerri is a co-author of Design as a Catalyst for Learning, which received the Outstanding Academic Book award in 2000 from the Association of College and Research Libraries, and of Old Cities/Green Cities: Communities Transform Unmanaged Land, published by the American Planning Association, 2002. She holds a B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University; an M.A. in Community Psychology from Temple University; and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. < Return to Staff Listing