The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation announced today that Cindy Chan Roubik was appointed Interim Executive Director effective immediately. Roubik is uniquely qualified for this role given her leadership experience managing high-impact initiatives for the City of Chicago, including building broad support for program and planning goals, developing transparent and equitable processes, and delivering outcomes that generate multiple public benefits. As Interim Executive Director, Roubik is responsible for all Foundation strategy and planning, programmatic, marketing, and visibility decisions, reporting to the Foundation’s Sole Member and the Board of Directors.
Roubik will continue to hold her position as Driehaus Foundation Senior Program Director for the Built Environment, where she will remain responsible for grantmaking leadership; managing budget planning, oversight, and reporting; developing, managing, and evaluating philanthropic investments; and representing the Foundation and its Directors to existing and prospective grant recipients and other external stakeholders.
Roubik worked at the City of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development for over twenty years, including as the department’s Deputy Commissioner since 2022 where she supervised all seven of the department's regional planning teams. Through these projects and others, Roubik addressed Chicago’s built environment including repopulating disinvested communities, converting vacant office and retail spaces, and adding to the city’s housing stock, including more affordable housing. In 2022, Roubik was a Civic Leadership Academy Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Prior to joining the City of Chicago, she worked in private practice at Lucien Lagrange Architects as a designer for several high-rise condominium and hotel projects. She is an alumna of McGill University’s School of Architecture and a Guest lecturer for numerous Architect and Planning Associations.
In addition, the Driehaus Foundation promoted Lori Dimun to the new position of Interim Chief Operating Officer. In this role, she will provide integrated leadership across all of the Foundation’s administrative and operational functions in order to ensure that program officers, communication plans & technology work as one coordinated platform in support of the Foundation’s mission. As a veteran arts executive, Dimun was recruited as a strategic leadership hire to manage its Arts and Culture support as its Senior Program Director, a role she will continue to hold.
Under this new leadership, the Driehaus Foundation is financially strong and positioned well for the future.
Founded in 1983 by legendary investor and philanthropist, Richard H. Driehaus (1942-2021), the Foundation supports the three critical local areas: the built environment, arts & culture, and investigative journalism for government accountability. The Foundation has enriched the lives of Chicagoans for more than four decades. With its expanded scale and bold vision for the future, the Driehaus Foundation is poised to have even greater impact.
