NPAG Leading CEO Search for Horizons Foundation
March 19, 2026 – Executive search firm NPAG has been retained by Horizons Foundation to lead in its search for a new CEO. The search is being led by Ellen LaPointe. The next CEO will bring strategic clarity, fundraising acumen, community insight, and a demonstrated commitment to justice, equity, and LGBTQ belonging. This leader will navigate a rapidly evolving social, political, and philanthropic landscape—modernizing systems, expanding the donor base, stewarding the growing endowment, and reinforcing Horizons’ essential role as a champion for LGBTQ communities at a time of both significant challenge and opportunity.
With the pending retirement of its long tenured leader Roger Doughty, whose vision and leadership over more than two decades have helped establish Horizons as a steady, stabilizing force in the Bay Area LGBTQ community, Horizons is seeking a bold, values driven individual to lead the organization as its next CEO. This transition is both consequential and full of possibility, according to the job specification.
The next CEO will step into a landscape shaped by escalating political attacks on LGBTQ communities, evolving philanthropic norms, and a transfer of leadership and assets in the LGBTQ movement. The new CEO will serve as a leading voice, a skilled ambassador, and a strategic partner to donors, community organizations, and civic leaders, expanding Horizons’ reach, modernizing fundraising strategies, and strengthening the foundation’s role as a catalytic force in the movement to protect and advance LGBTQ rights.
As the world’s first community foundation of, by, and for LGBTQ people, Horizons is a national leader in LGBTQ philanthropy, granting over $12 million annually and stewarding more than $70 million in assets. Horizons has served for more than 45 years as a wellspring of support to San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ nonprofit organizations, a trusted philanthropic anchor for social justice causes, and a national leader in community investment. Horizons partners with donors, movement organizations, and community leaders to strengthen LGBTQ nonprofits, expand a culture of LGBTQ giving, and build a permanent endowment to secure the future of the LGBTQ community.
Since 2002, NPAG is a national executive search and consulting firm dedicated to supporting justice movement leadership. The firm has partnered with a broad range of foundations and non-profits working in racial and gender equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive health, democracy preservation, public health, economic justice, climate, and other social justice movements. They are a women-owned and women-led firm with a diverse team of 20+ professionals, and have completed over 1,400 searches – including many hundreds at the CEO/executive director level – nationally and globally over nearly 25 years. In addition to search, NPAG provide bespoke training and capacity building, outplacement, board facilitation and development, and both team and individual leadership coaching services.
Related: Navigating Uncertainty: How Non-Profit Executive Search is Evolving
Ms. LaPointe, managing director, is a seasoned non-profit executive who has held C-suite and other senior leadership roles in organizations focused on LGBTQIA+/HIV health care, research and advocacy; philanthropy; technology-centered approaches to advancing well-being; law; and intersectional equity and social justice throughout her career. Her national practice at NPAG includes retained executive search in philanthropy and in legal and health-focused non-profits, board and executive level strategic advisory services, succession planning, executive coaching, and outplacement support. Most recently, Ms. LaPointe was CEO of Fenway Health, a $145 million, 600-person non-profit that advocates for and delivers innovative, equitable, accessible health care, supportive services, and transformative research and education to over 33,000 LGBTQIA+ people and people from other underserved communities annually.
Proteus Fund Search
NPAG was recently selected by Proteus Fund and the Proteus Action League to lead in its hunt for a new president and CEO. Proteus Fund is seeking a president and CEO who will lead the organization in this context with renewed clarity of purpose, deep resolve, and bold stewardship that builds on Proteus Fund’s strong foundation and momentum, while evolving to meet the urgency, complexity, and opportunities of the moment and realizing a vision for amplified, enduring impact.
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The next CEO of Proteus Fund will be an experienced, principled, values-driven, and highly resilient leader who is passionate about advancing social justice and transforming philanthropy, according to the job specification. They will guide the organization through a time of uncertainty and challenge in our world, building on the considerable legacy and momentum Proteus Fund has achieved to date.
Proteus Fund partners with foundations, individual donors, activists, and other allies to work strategically towards racial, gender, queer, and disability justice and an inclusive, fully representative democracy. The Fund partners with philanthropic and community leaders to identify critical opportunities, gaps, and challenges facing movement organizations and mobilizes donor support and a range of non-grant tools to strengthen and sustain their work.
Related: 7 Key Trends Impacting Non-Profits
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
