March 21, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Background: Ms. Gunn will become president in April of the Structured Employment and Economic Development Corporation, or Seedco, a New York charity that works nationwide to help low-income people move toward steady employment and communities become more stable economically. She worked for nearly 15 years as the senior vice president for operations and government relations at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York. She also served in various jobs in the administration of New York Mayor Edward I. Koch, including director of the Mayor’s Office of Operations from 1986 to 1989.
Education: She received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the College of Saint Rose, in Albany, and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Why Ms. Gunn was hired: George A. Pruitt, Seedco’s board chair and the president of Thomas Edison State College, in Trenton, N.J., said her years at the museum and in the New York City government give Ms. Gunn knowledge not only of financial management but also of economic development, job training, and social services.
Why she took the job: With the nation’s unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, Ms. Gunn, 61, said it was “the perfect moment” to focus again on helping people find and keep jobs and other challenges she worked on earlier in her career.
Salary: Ms. Gunn declined to reveal her compensation.
What she’s reading: All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren; How Terrorism Ends, by Audrey Kurth Cronin; Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? by James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger; and Wolf Hall: a Novel, by Hilary Mantel.
