MIAMI – Three new members have been elected to the board of trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: Paul Steiger, vice president of Dow Jones & Co. and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and South Florida-based financiers E. Roe Stamps IV, co-founder and managing partner of Summit Partners in Boston, and Earl W. Powell, chairman and CEO of Trivest Partners L.P.
Steiger, Stamps and Powell succeed Creed Black, who retired as a trustee after serving for 18 years on the board, including 10 as president; Leslie M. “Bud” Baker, who resigned last October; and fill one vacant position on the board.
“Our three new members bring rich experience in areas that are fundamental to Knight Foundation’s purpose: journalism, education, philanthropy and finance,” said W. Gerald Austen, M.D., chairman of Knight Foundation’s board of trustees. “Their presence on the board will greatly assist our ongoing mission of transformational change. We expect their expertise in the finance and investment arenas to be particularly useful as we manage the assets left in our trust by the Knight brothers.”
Powell, 67, is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Trivest Partners, L.P., a private equity investment firm in Miami. Mr. Powell is also chairman of Atlantis Plastics Inc., director of Directed Electronics Inc., and a director of several Trivest-related companies. Prior to forming Trivest in 1981, Mr. Powell was a partner of KPMG Peat Marwick. He is a trustee at the University of Florida and chairman of the board of the University of Florida Investment Company. Powell and his wife, Christy, are significant contributors to the University of Florida and Stephens College, where Christy also serves on the board of trustees.
Powell earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Miami in 1964 after earlier attending the University of Florida from 1957-1960. He is a former certified public accountant.
Stamps, 60, co-founded Summit Partners in 1984 after working as a partner with TA Associates and earlier as a senior investment manager at First Chicago Investment Corp. He and his wife, Penny, have given substantially to charitable causes, notably higher education, with significant gifts going to University of Michigan, Harvard Business School and Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently, he sits on the board of trustees for the Georgia Tech Foundation, the University of Miami and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. He and his wife serve as, respectively, treasurer and president of the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation.
Steiger, 63, has held the managing editor position at The Wall Street Journal since 1991, a period in which the Journal newsroom has won 14 Pulitzer Prizes. In 2002, he received both the Columbia Journalism Award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award. Steiger is also board chair for the Committee to Protect Journalists and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He began his career as a journalist in the newsrooms of The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, winning five awards for economics and business coverage.
The other members of the board are: Mary Sue Coleman, president, University of Michigan; Mariam C. Noland, president, Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan; Marjorie Knight Crane and Beverly Knight Olson, daughters of Jim Knight; Cesar L. Alvarez, president and CEO of Greenberg Traurig L.L.P., an international law firm; Vice Chair Robert Briggs, chairman emeritus and former CEO of the Ohio law firm Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs and executive director of the GAR Foundation; James N. Crutchfield, president and publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal; Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation; Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president and CEO; Rolfe Neill, retired chairman and publisher of The Charlotte Observer; and John W. Rogers Jr., chairman and CEO of Ariel Capital Management.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the communities where the Knight brothers ran newspapers. To learn more about Knight Foundation’s transformational funding, visit www.knightfdn.org/annual.