Don’t let the landscaped neighborhoods and tidy green spaces fool you, Beverly White-Seals explains to Howard County philanthropists. There’s a deep well of needs hidden just beneath the area’s affluent reputation.

It’s something she would know after 13 years leading the Community Foundation of Howard County. Now White-Seals is preparing to retire this year from the job as one of the region’s prominent fundraisers to spend more time with her family. The 74-year-old has agreed to remain in the executive role until the organization’s trustees complete a national search for her successor.

Whoever comes next, White-Seals said, must show donors how issues such as housing affordability and food insecurity trouble even places like Howard, one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S.

“If you don’t see it, you don’t have as much of an interest in supporting it,“ she said. ”You assume there are no problems.”

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Shattering assumptions is the biggest part of the job, said White-Seals, who’s served on more than 20 nonprofit boards across the region. She’s taken a hands-on approach by personally driving potential donors around the community or scheduling meetings for them with leaders.

In a statement, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball called White-Seals a “sounding board and staple among our nonprofit and philanthropic community.”

The Howard County community foundation grew significantly under White-Seals’ leadership, said Barbara Rishel, who chairs the organization’s board of trustees, in a statement. Organization leaders cited a number of accomplishments in White-Seals’ retirement announcement, including more than doubling the organization’s assets to $39 million from $15 million, distributing more than $28 million in grants to nonprofits and establishing initiatives to address community issues.

“Her initiatives and steadfast commitment have expanded the Foundation’s outreach to all areas of Howard County, including to some of our most recently arrived foreign-born neighbors, and her impact on the nonprofit community is immeasurable,” Rishel said in the statement. “Beverly continues to be an inspiration to me and many others, and her guidance and invaluable perspective will be missed.”

White-Seals first moved to Columbia in 1979 to work as an attorney for the Rouse Co. and spent two decades in the developer’s legal department providing real estate and employment counsel. She got involved in the community and started working with local nonprofits.

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“It was sort of like a hobby,” she said. “I loved learning what other people were doing, what the needs in the community were. Because I had a legal background, that was helpful to most nonprofits.”

She later served as board chair of Howard County General Hospital and on the board of Johns Hopkins Medicine. She also provided legal counsel and worked as director of workforce diversity at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System from 2006 to 2012, before joining the foundation.

After returning to work in Howard County, White-Seals organized philanthropic responses to disasters like the 2016 and 2018 Ellicott City floods as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also oversaw the foundation’s rebranding in 2012 from its prior name, Columbia Foundation, and helped negotiate the purchase of the historic Athol Manor in the Columbia village of Hickory Ridge to become the foundation’s permanent home.

The board of trustees has hired an outside firm, DRiWaterstone, to conduct the search for a new executive.