Mike Pratt

Mike Pratt

In 2010, Mike Pratt was named President and Executive Director of the Scherman Foundation. "Mr. Pratt had been serving as Acting President since June 2009, when Sandra Silverman, the foundation's former President, went on medical leave. Ms. Silverman will return in spring 2010 as the foundation's Senior Program Director. Mr. Pratt has been with the Scherman Foundation since 1996, serving as its Program Officer. He has been an enormous asset, focusing particular attention on shaping the foundation's environmental and social welfare giving. Mr. Pratt led the Scherman Foundation's expanding support for climate change efforts, emphasizing the role of organizing and advocacy, a theme increasingly reflected in the foundation's work on urban poverty and development issues in New York City as well. Mr. Pratt has provided leadership in several outside philanthropic roles, including serving as Chair and Treasurer of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and as Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Initiative for Neighborhood and City-Wide Organizing (INCO). In 1998, Mr. Pratt took on the additional role of Treasurer at the foundation, in which capacity he helped take its portfolio from a single manager to a fully diversified structure, utilizing over fifteen active managers in various asset classes. A lawyer by training, Mr. Pratt worked previously with the Civil Division of the Legal Aid Society, developing a specialty in federal housing programs and land use/development law. Prior to attending NYU School of Law, he worked for NYPIRG, first as a community organizer and then as Director of the Straphangers Campaign. Mr. Pratt currently serves as the Chair of the Board of the Pratt Institute."


 * Director, New York Foundation

His mother was Julie Pratt Shattuck.