Healthy Communities Foundation

Healthy Communities Foundation

Healthy Communities Foundation launched in 1999 in Riverside, Illinois, born from the sale of MacNeal Hospital. Maria Pesqueira has served as President since inception, guiding the conversion of a singular healthcare monetization event into a permanent philanthropic endowment. The foundation serves a hyper-local geography — Chicago and the western suburbs of Cook County — with a mission to measurably improve health and well-being through grantmaking and investments. The foundation runs a multi-asset strategy spanning venture capital, buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, secondaries, and natural resources. Its portfolio mixes direct co-investments and fund commitments. Confirmed positions include the DWS RREEF Real Assets Fund. The board and finance committee bring deep operational and financial expertise from entities including Sinai Chicago, Old National Bank, and Metro Edge Development Partners, reinforcing its ability to underwrite complex private-market deals. Investment activity is concentrated in North America, with a deliberate geographic overlay focused entirely on its service region. Healthy Communities Foundation operates from its main office in Riverside and an additional presence at the FBRK Impact House in downtown Chicago. The foundation is an active member of the Executive Network of Midsize Foundations at the Council on Foundations, Forefront's Racial Equity Committee, and Grantmakers In Health's health conversion foundation network. Its finance committee includes Craig Huffman, CEO of Metro Edge Development Partners, and Corliss Garner, an executive vice president at Old National Bank — professionals who bring a direct practitioner's lens to the endowment's alternative asset commitments. The foundation's structural differentiator is its pure conversion-foundation DNA — an endowment capitalized by the sale of a community hospital, not by a family or operating company. This creates an investment committee where place-based mission fidelity and permanent capital meet a conventional diversified portfolio. The governance architecture requires every alternative investment or co-investment to pass a dual test of fiduciary return and direct alignment with health equity outcomes in a single county.