Board of Directors

The 10-member volunteer Board of Directors is the governing body of AARP Foundation.

Board Chair, Mae Mendelson, Ph.D., of Kailua, HI, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2010 and was appointed to the AARP Board of Directors in 2006. Dr. Mendelson is President of Travel & Learn, an intergenerational study tour company. She is also a Professor in Residence at Chaminade University of Honolulu to develop their Intergenerational Center.

Neal Cutler, Ph.D., of Woodland Hills, CA, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2010. He is currently Executive Director of the Center on Aging of the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF), Dean of the American Institute of Financial Gerontology (AIFG), and an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC and a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the Employee Benefit Research Institute. 

Kathleen Edmond, J.D., of Edina, MN, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2010. She is currently Chief Ethics Officer at Best Buy. She established Best Buy’s Ethics Office to support its global operations. Ms. Edmond is a member of the Conference Board Global Council of Business Conduct and is a founding member of Best Buy’s Corporate Responsibility Governance Committee and Enterprise Risk Management Council.

Marc Ginsberg, J.D., of Bethesda, MD, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2010. He has served as Senior Vice President of APCO Worldwide since 2001. APCO is the third largest independent global corporate communications and market development consulting company in the United States.

J. David Nelson, MBA, of Old Greenwich, CT, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board in 2008; he is also a member of the AARP Board of Directors, Class of 2014. Mr. Nelson is executive vice chairman of VaporStream Inc., a software company from Chicago that has created an innovative application that provides effective private email communications that are read and then gone forever, also reducing the unnecessary costs of email storage and maintenance.

Addison Barry Rand is chief executive officer (CEO) of AARP, the world's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to social change and helping people 50 and over to improve the quality of their lives. He has served as chairman and chief executive officer of Avis Group Holdings, CEO of Equitant Ltd., and executive vice president, Worldwide Operations, at Xerox Corporation. He serves as chairman of the Board of Trustees of Howard University.

George Rowan, Ph.D., of East Lansing, MI, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2006, he is also a member of the AARP Board of Directors, Class of 2012. Dr. Rowan currently is a professor at Michigan State University (MSU) and holds an extension appointment. Previously, he was director of the David Walker Research Institute at MSU and assistant dean for external relations.

Joan Ruff, J.D., of Mission Woods, KS, was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2008. She recently retired after more than 30 years in the private sector. Ms. Ruff spent the last ten years of her professional working life as Assistant Vice President of Knowledge Development for H&R Block and as Executive Vice President for Corporate Development at Zurich Financial Services-North America.

Fernando Torres-Gil, Ph.D., was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board of Directors in 2007 and elected to the AARP Board of Directors, Class of 2016. Dr. Torres-Gil is Acting Dean and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy, and Director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging at the School of Public Affairs, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).