SUNY Westchester Community College

SUNY Westchester Community College

The Westchester Community College Foundation launched in 1969 as the fundraising and asset-management arm of SUNY Westchester Community College. Dolores Swirin-Yao serves as Executive Director, overseeing a board chaired by Thomas T. Lee. The foundation's identity is inseparable from the college it supports: it funds student scholarships, workforce development programs, and capital improvements across the Valhalla campus. Unlike a typical higher-education endowment managed by an investment office, operations appear tightly integrated with the college's development function. The foundation's investment committee allocates across a mix of real assets, commingled funds, and mission-related holdings. The portfolio includes a stake in Hancock Timberland XI, L.P., a staple of institutional timber investing, alongside positions in three vehicles managed by TIFF Investment Management — the Global Equity Fund, Keystone Fund, and Centerstone Fund — signaling a fund-of-funds posture common among smaller endowments. On the direct side, the foundation holds County Homes LLC, a residential rental property, and Hartford Hall, a commercial building at 75 Grasslands Road. An art gallery collection housed in the Academic Arts Building rounds out the tangible assets. The organization is not a registered investment advisor and does not market fund products externally. Board leadership combines institutional and entrepreneurial experience. Treasurer Robert Cordero and board member Lorna Hawthorne — co-founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Restaurants, a franchised Caribbean-food chain with over 100 locations — bring operating-company perspective to investment oversight. The foundation maintains a relationship with the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, which has provided workforce-program grants, and partners with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on its Native Plant Center initiative. Membership in Nonprofit Westchester, a professional network, connects the foundation to the regional philanthropic ecosystem. In recent years, the foundation has sustained its scholarship disbursement pace while the portfolio's timberland and commingled-fund allocations provide inflation-aware ballast. Structurally, this foundation sits at the intersection of a community-college advancement office and a small institutional investor. It does not operate with the scale or staffing of a dedicated investment office, yet its board oversees a portfolio spanning private-market fund interests, direct real estate, and a beneficial interest in trust — a breadth that reflects careful stewardship of limited resources. The blended approach, combining TIFF's outsourced CIO model with direct local real estate holdings, distinguishes it from purely donor-advised college foundations that outsource all investment discretion.