East Bay Community Foundation did not need an icebreaker for its new chief executive this week. Pamela Calloway has chaired the foundation’s board, sat on it for years, and already held the top job once. On Monday, October 19, she started her second stint as interim president and CEO of the Oakland-based foundation, which announced the appointment the following day.
The move follows Brandi Howard’s decision to step down after nearly four years as president and CEO. Xavier Morales, the board chair who stepped in as interim chief after Howard’s departure, returns to the chair’s seat and will meet regularly with Calloway through the transition. “It has been my honor to serve as Interim President and CEO until we could identify the next leader to guide EBCF through this transition,” Morales said. “The Board is confident that Pamela is that leader.”
One fact shapes the whole arrangement: Calloway will not seek the permanent role. Her assignment is steadiness, holding the foundation’s grantmaking and donor work at full pace while the board runs a full search, the same kind of leadership transition playing out across the field this fall, from university boards to the Ford Foundation’s addition of Fatima Goss Graves to its board of trustees.
A familiar set of hands
Calloway last held this job from November 2021 to January 2023, and the foundation did not spend those fourteen months in a holding pattern. Under her interim tenure, EBCF launched a new brand, rewrote its Investment Policy Statement to reflect its commitment to racial justice, and granted nearly $500,000 to organizations running COVID-19 education and outreach in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. That record is the reason the board reached for her again: an interim who has already done the work once does not need a learning curve.
The foundation she returns to is approaching a milestone of its own. EBCF celebrates its centennial in 2028, a hundred years of grantmaking in the East Bay, and Calloway named that date in her first statement back.
The career she brings back
Calloway’s working life has been spent in East Bay workforce and economic development. She has served as executive director of The Bread Project, which trains people for jobs in the food industry, as a member of the Port of Oakland Board of Port Commissioners, as a consultant to Oakland Thrives and the Rise East Initiative, and as district director for former Congresswoman Barbara Lee. She is an attorney with more than two decades of leadership across government, the private sector, and civic life.
She is also a graduate of Fisk University, with a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, which places her in the long line of HBCU alumni running American philanthropy from inside its oldest institutions.
The board has given no timeline for naming a permanent president and CEO, and Calloway’s mandate is deliberately narrow: keep the foundation strong, serve its communities and donors without interruption, and hand over a healthy organization. Her own summary of the job is the best guide to how she intends to do it. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with the amazing EBCF staff and Board again during this time of executive transition,” she said. “I’m eager to contribute to our continued progress and help ensure the success of the Foundation’s next CEO.”
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
