Clara Miller, President, F.B. Heron Foundation

New role: On March 1, Ms. Miller, 61, will assume her new role at the New York foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations that seek to build wealth in low-income urban and rural communities. Heron is known for tying its investments to its charitable mission. More than 40 percent of its $254-million endowment is held in investments that advance the foundation’s economic-development cause.

Previous job: She is the founder and chief executive of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which offers consulting services and loans to nonprofit groups. The organization, with headquarters in New York, has received grants and loans from Heron since 1995.

Why she is making the move: Leaving the group she has led for 30 years is “poignant” but the right thing to do, says Ms. Miller. “In the nonprofit sector, the trick is not to stay too long. The danger is that I don’t allow the phenomenal talent we have to step forward and spread their wings.”

Her agenda: Ms. Miller says her most important goal is to rethink the way the foundation works with community-development finance institutions, organizations that provide assistance to housing and economic-development groups, and others. The troubled economy “makes it even more urgent that we don’t think of foundations as being inside a terrarium where we make grants,” she says. “It makes it very important that we look outside.”

Education: Ms. Miller received a bachelor’s degree in studio arts from the University of New Hampshire and a master’s degree in regional planning from Cornell University. She also completed the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management Program at Columbia University.

Salary: She declined to reveal it.

Recent reading: The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff.