The president of The Duke Endowment, Elizabeth Locke, announced her decision to retire Wednesday, effective Dec. 2004. The current vice president and director of the Health Care Division, Eugene Cochrane, will succeed her as president. Cochrane has worked in the Health Care division for 23 years and has been director since 1991.
The vacant health care division directorship will be filled by Mary Piepenbring, a former hospital administrator, who now serves as the associate director.
Industrialist and philanthropist James B. Duke founded the Endowment in 1924, and since that time, grants awarded total in excess of $1.8 billion. The Duke Endowment, which is based in Charlotte, awarded over $116 million in grants last year to programs with an emphasis on spiritual life, higher education, children's welfare and health care.
The Duke Endowment has been a strong supporter of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative in the past which works to ensure affordable housing and safety in neighborhoods surrounding the University.
The Duke Endowment provided $5 million toward programs at the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences, $6 million for the University's new science initiative and $1 million for the Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy.
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