Komen Board Chairman Steps Aside

The chairman of Susan G. Komen for the Cure is stepping down from the leadership post, The Washington Post reports.

The breast-cancer charity said LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., a prominent Howard University surgeon, is giving up the chairmanship to focus on increased duties at the Washington, D.C., university but will remain on the Komen board.

A source familiar with the board’s deliberations told the Post that Howard wanted Dr. Leffall, who was recently named the university’s provost and chief academic officer, to distance himself from the Komen foundation in the wake of the Planned Parenthood controversy. Dr. Leffall declined to comment.

Founding Komen board member Robert Taylor, a close friend of the charity’s founder and chief executive, Nancy Brinker, will return from retirement to assume the chairmanship. The foundation also approved plans Thursday to add a board seat representing local affiliates.

The board reshuffle comes as several Komen chapter leaders and national executives are leaving the organization, which continues to struggle with financial and structural fallout from its decision to terminate, then reinstate, grants to Planned Parenthood.

Dig deeper: See a Chronicle opinion article from two former nonprofit leaders who say the Komen controversy’s lessons are about poor management, not cultural divisions over the group’s Planned Parenthood grants.