Board of Directors

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

Neal Cutler, Ph.D., of Woodland Hills, Calif., 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. 

Ronald E. Daly Sr., of Olympia Fields, Ill., was elected to the AARP Board of Directors in 2012. Daly retired after 38 years at the RR Donnelley Company, where he began as a factory worker and advanced to the level of president of its largest unit. He later became president and CEO of Oce', USA Holdings, a subsidiary of Oce' NV.

Allen Douma, M.D., of Ashland, Ore., was elected to the AARP Board in 2008. He serves on the Member and Social Impact Committee and the Insurance Trust. He also served on the AARP Oregon Executive Council, the National Policy Council and the Audit and Finance Committee. He is currently chief executive officer of Empower LLC.

Kathleen Edmond, J.D., of Edina, Minn., 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.

Jaime P. Gutíerrez, vice president for external relations at the University of Arizona, joined the Foundation’s board in 2012. He served on the Arizona State Retirement System board of trustees for six years and, before that, was an Arizona state senator for 14 years, where he chaired the Appropriations, Ethics and Joint Legislative Budget Committees. Named one of the top 10 Arizona state legislators by his peers, he recently received the Victoria Foundation Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education.

Harry E. Johnson Sr. joined AARP Foundation’s board in 2012. President and CEO of the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation since 2002, he raised $120 million for the National Memorial on the Mall honoring Dr. King’s life and legacy. Mr. Johnson received the Trumpet Foundation President’s Award in 2011, chaired the Houston African American Museum board from 2006-2009 and was named one of the 100 most influential black Americans by Ebony magazine for four years in a row.

Doris W. Koo joined AARP Foundation’s Board of Directors in 2012. She was president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., one of the country’s largest private investors in green affordable housing, until 2010. Previously, she was development director and deputy executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority. She began as a community organizer, leading Asian Americans for Equality from a community-based civil rights organization into one of New York City’s largest low-income housing owner/developers. 

J. David Nelson, MBA, of Old Greenwich, Conn., was appointed to the AARP Foundation Board in 2008; he is also a member of the AARP Board of Directors, Class of 2014. He is currently vice chairman, VaporStream Inc., a Chicago software company and former chief operating officer, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship which teaches entrepreneurial and life skills to young people from low-income communities.

Barbara O'Connor, Ph.D., of Sacramento, Calif., was elected to the AARP Board in 2010. She serves on the Audit and Finance Committee and is on the Insurance Trust. She is a former professor of communication studies and director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media, California State University, Sacramento.