Cory S. Anderson
Vice President

Cory Anderson is WRF’s vice president responsible for managing the Foundation’s Program Team and leading the Foundation’s grantmaking efforts in the areas of Community and Economic Development. Cory came to the Rockefeller Foundation in 2008 after seven years with the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked to support state-level child advocacy organizations.
 
A variety of job experiences prepared Cory for his work with the Foundation. As a reporter with the Arkansas Gazette, he researched and reported on issues related to school, children, and higher education. His roles as a juvenile probation officer, as a program coordinator for a direct service program that provided an array of services to families and children, and as a state program specialist with the Corporation for National Service with responsibility for 25 AmeriCorps VISTA projects add valuable knowledge and skills. Cory also served as an intervention specialist and later as a program specialist with New Futures for Youth, where he assisted in the development of a model gang intervention program and then worked on youth employability issues.

In addition to working for the Casey Foundation during his time away from Arkansas, Cory was also manager of partner development at the Forum for Youth Investment in Washington, D.C., engaging national organizations in partnerships designed to strengthen youth work.

Cory currently serves on the board of directors for Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and the Health Policy Board of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.

Cory, who is married to Dr. Phillis Nichols-Anderson, vice president of a national charter school management organization, is currently pursuing a master’s degree in theology from Anderson University. The Andersons have two sons still at home, a third son who works and lives in New York City, a daughter who recently graduated from law school, and one granddaughter.