Laurel Randi

Laurel Randi joined the McCune Foundation in 2006, first as a Program Officer.  In October 2016, she became the Foundation’s third Executive Director since its inception in 1979.  Previously as Program Director, Ms. Randi worked with the former Executive Director to develop the Foundation’s strategy to sunset the Foundation by October 2029. Over the next 7 years, the Foundation will expend approximately $250 million as it spends down all assets. The Sunset Strategy is dramatically changing the work of the Foundation. For more information, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.mccune.org.

The Foundation’s mission is to support non-profit organizations that advance the quality of life for the people of southwestern Pennsylvania by fostering community vitality and economic growth to improve the region for current and future generations.  This mission is accomplished through grantmaking in four program areas: education, health and human services, humanities, and civic affairs (including, but not limited to, community and economic development).

The sunset strategy is centered around Three Guiding Principles:

• Finish well the things we have started
• Don’t start new things we cannot finish well
• Leave it better than we found it

And, focused on three goals:

• Seek and facilitate Big Ideas that transform the realm of possibility for the region
• Strengthen the capacities and financial capabilities of grantee organizations so they can capitalize on opportunities, weather future storms with resilience, and most effectively deliver on their missions
• Strengthen the region’s nonprofit sector so it serves the community optimally and maximally.

Ms. Randi manages a team of seven, and works closely with the Foundation’s seven-member Distribution Committee, four of whom are McCune family members.  Ms. Randi also shares grantmaking responsibilities across the Foundation’s four program areas with particular concentrations in community and economic development, higher education, and human services.

Laurel knows the Pittsburgh community well from both her educational and professional experience, as well as her civic volunteer activities.  For close to ten years, she worked at a neighborhood-based nonprofit organization that provides youth development programs, community arts initiatives, urban agriculture and education, free home repairs for seniors, and service learning experiences for local and national youth.  Prior to that, she worked for Carnegie Mellon in the Dean’s Office of Student Affairs.

Laurel received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Business and Public Policy, and her master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College in Public Policy and Management.  Additionally, she is a 2003 graduate of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs.

Laurel is a native of Los Angeles and moved to Pittsburgh in 1992.  She and her family live in Highland Park, one of Pittsburgh’s 90 neighborhoods.