Board of Directors

PAULA DIERENFELD was elected mayor of Johnston, Iowa, in 2008 and has served as Johnston’s mayor since becoming the longest-serving female mayor in Iowa.

DAVID E. ELWELL is a retired Brigadier General of the United States Army. He is currently President of Elwell Financial, Inc. and President of Benjamin Companies.

JOSEPHINE GITTLER is the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law.

ANNE HARRIS is the President of Grinnell College. She is one of the founders and an active member of the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness Initiative, which consists of 120 colleges and universities throughout the United States.

CRAIG HILL is a grain and livestock farmer. He served in various leadership positions of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF) for 40 years, including as President for 10 years.

GREG HUDSON is a social studies teacher at West Des Moines Valley High School in West Des Moines. He is a member of the West Des Moines City Council.

PAM JOCHUM served as a member of the Iowa Senate (2013-2024) and as a member of the Iowa House of Representatives (1993-2009). During the 2024 legislative session, she was the Senate Democratic Minority Leader, and she was previously the President of the Iowa Senate.

CHARLES LARSON JR. is a founding partner of LS2group, a strategic communications firm that provides public policy, public relations, and marketing services to clients locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. He was formerly an Iowa State Representative and Chair of the Iowa Republican Party.

CHRIS MCGOWAN is president of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce and The Siouxland Initiative (TSI). He is Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of the Iowa Chamber Alliance.

STEVE MCMAHON is the Co-founder and CEO of Purple Strategies, which provides comprehensive brand, reputation, crisis management, and issue advocacy campaigns for national and international companies, industries, such as BP, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Caterpillar, Bayer, and Pharma, and the American Chemical Council. He has also handled a variety of initiatives and referendum campaigns. Before co-founding Purple Strategies, he held senior roles in three presidential campaigns and served as a media consultant for Senate, gubernatorial, and mayoral campaigns nationwide.

PAUL MULHAUSEN, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer at Iowa Total Care, a Medicaid managed care health plan. He is President-elect of the American Geriatrics Society and the former President of the Iowa Medical Society.

MARK PUTNAM is the President of Central College and has served in higher education for 43 years across multiple institutions. He also chairs the Board of Directors of the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, representing 27 private, nonprofit institutions of higher learning in Iowa.

CHARLES SCHNEIDER is counsel for Principal Financial Group. He served two terms in the Iowa Senate (2013-2021) and was Senate President (2018-2021).

SUKU RADIA is the former CEO of Bankers Trust, a position in which he served for nine years (2008-2017). Before joining Bankers Trust, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Meredith Corporation for eight years and was the Managing Partner of KPMG in Des Moines for 25 years. He is the recipient of numerous awards and donors, including induction into the Iowa Business Hall of Fame.

ADAM VORRIE is the high school Principal and a former social studies middle school teacher, teacher mentor, and district mentor coordinator for the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Consolidated School District in Clarion, Iowa.