A Message from Our Board

In 2011, Blake Newton, the president of the Roothbert Fund, asked me to stand for election to the Roothbert Board. This was two years after I interviewed at the Fund’s office in New York City and was granted a fellowship to cover part of the tuition cost for my Masters in Public Health.

For me, this year marks 10 years serving on the Board. It has been exciting to see the Board membership and structure change significantly over that period of time. For the first few years as a board member, Blake independently managed much of the Fund’s activities and reviewed all the scholarship applications (they were paper at the time). As a board member, my responsibilities were minimal: attend meetings and help out as an interviewer in Washington, DC. After Blake stepped down in 2015, Charles van Horne became president and started the board on a five-year transition to more equitably spread out the responsibilities of maintaining the Fund and in the process engage younger fellows and bring on additional board members. My responsibilities expanded to help develop and manage the online scholarship application system and engage over 60 former fellows to read, review, and interview applicants every year.

In 2021 Charlie stepped down as President of the Board, and the Board transitioned to a four member executive committee that manages four committees: fellowship, finance, scholarship, and technology/ communication.  At our October board meeting we began refining a proposal for a new structure that would rotate all board members through executive committee membership and leadership for the four committees. After some further revisions, we hope to make this transition permanent at our spring board meeting. This is an exciting, decade-long evolution for the Roothbert Fund – to move from an executive structure to one that is more horizontal as we continually seek to democratize and make our processes more transparent, and better engage younger fellows in the maintenance and development of the Fund.

Vijay Varma

Roothbert Fellow ‘09

Board Member