Draft:Clara Miller

Clara Miller (born 1949 in Hanover, New Hampshire) is an American entrepreneur, innovator and executive in social sector finance. She was Founder and President/CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund (1984-2011), and President of the F.B. Heron Foundation (2011-2018).

Early Life and Education
Clara Miller (née Clara Gellerman) was born in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1949 to Josef E. and Ellen M. Gellerman (née Meservey). Her father was a professor of economics and business law at various universities. Her uncle was American physicist Robert Meservey.

She graduated from Hanover High School (New Hampshire) in 1967 and attended the University of New Hampshire from 1970 to 1972, graduating in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in Studio Art with a concentration in printmaking and sculpture.

Miller worked at the National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences in Washington as a Receptionist and Assistant for Special Projects from 1973-1974.

She attended Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning from 1974 to 1976, graduating in 1977 with a Masters in Regional Planning. Her thesis was "An Approach to Planning in the Small Town."

Career
In 1996, Miller was a Bill Clinton appointee to the U.S. Treasury’s first Community Development Advisory Board for the then-newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. She later became its chair. She chaired the Opportunity Finance Network board for six years during her nine-year tenure (1992-2001) and was a member of the Community Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2001 to 2007. She was a member of he inaugural Nonprofit Accounting Advisory Committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board from 2010 to 2014. Miller’s work at the Heron Foundation was featured an a 2018 case study by Stanford Graduate School of Business, “The Heron Foundation: 100 Percent for Mission and Beyond.”

Miller was awarded a Bellagio Residency by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010. In 2015, she received the Prince’s Prize for Innovative Philanthropy, the “Shining Star” Award from NYC performance venue PS 122, and was named Institutional Investor Magazine’s Investor of the Year. She was named to the NonProfit Times's “Power and Influence Top 50” for seven years: 2006-2010, 2016 and 2017. She was also named to Inside Philanthropy’s “50 Most Powerful Women in U.S. Philanthropy" in 2016 and 2017. In 2017, she was honored as Social Innovator of the Year by the University of New Hampshire and named the “Foundation President We’ll Miss Most” by Inside Philanthropy.

Miller is a corporator of Walden Mutual Bank and a member of the Sustainability Advisory Committee of the University of New Hampshire. She is a board member of The Song Cave, a publication dedicated to literature and graphic art. She is an investment committee member of UpStart Co-Lab (Impact Investing for the Creative Economy) and an advisory board member of Open Road Alliance. Miller was a board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board from 2014 to 2019, serving as chair of its Development Committee and a member of its Executive Committee.