Charles Stewart Mott Foundation elects Karen Aldridge-Eason as new Board of Trustees member

FLINT, Michigan — The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint has added a new Board of Trustees member to the private charitable foundation. Since 1926, the Mott Foundation has provided grants to nonprofits to support the greater Flint community and communities around the world. Its goal is to strengthen the well-being of all aspects of the community.

Last year alone, the foundation made 376 grants, providing over $153 million in funding. 

Karen Aldridge-Eason joins the other 15 active board members and three trustees emeriti. The Flint native first joined Mott in 1993 as a program officer for the Flint Area team and is excited to continue the foundation’s mission of empowering communities. 

Growing up on the north side of Flint, Aldridge-Eason’s father was a local pastor and her mother was a local educator. She was very engaged in the community from a young age and has worked in several nonprofit organizations in informal and formal roles, including coaching and mentoring positions.

Her decades of experience include work as an administrator for a mission boarding school in Liberia, budget director for the City of Flint, and director of the Office of Health and Human Services with the Michigan Department of Management and Budget. 

“My initial engagement with the foundation is partly because I grew up in Flint, and was privileged to experience a lot of the Mott initiatives in school and after-school programs as a part of my development,” Aldridge-Eason says. “I was very aware of the presence of the Mott Foundation.

Aldridge-Eason is the first foundation liaison to a governor’s office in the United States. In her role in the nonpartisan Office of Foundation Liaison, she connects and unites policymakers across the state with local and regional foundation leaders to provide solutions and uplift children and families. 

As a new Board of Trustees member, effective Feb. 1, Aldridge-Eason has attended one meeting thus far and is excited to learn more and get reacquainted with the internal work of the foundation. 

“I have a passion around how the foundation can support the city of Flint in additional ways and more effective ways,” Aldridge-Eason says. “I’m very excited about the Rx Kids program that they’ve already put in place. What other support services do families need in this community to be successfully and economically stable on their own? I think we can model some things in Flint like Rx Kids that can be replicated across Michigan and across the country in ways that lift up people who are dealing with economic insecurity.”

In a press release, Ridgway White, board chair, commented on the experience Aldridge-Eason brings to her role. “With her devotion to Flint, experience working in government agencies and decades spent nurturing public-private partnerships at the state level, Karen Aldridge-Eason brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique lens to the Mott Foundation board of trustees,” said White. “We’re enormously grateful for the work Karen has done to serve her home community of Flint and all Michigan residents, and we look forward to her guidance as a trustee.”

Aldridge-Eason is excited about the opportunity with the Board. “They have not ever had a staff member serve in this role before as a Trustee, nor have they had a Black person from Flint serve in this role before,” she says. “I feel honored and privileged to have this opportunity.”

To learn more about the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, visit: mott.org