Mary Pounder (she/her) joined AFC’s board in 2018. She serves as the Executive Director of the Comer Family Foundation. She has a passion for advancing systemic change for equitable health care through the framework of harm reduction, preventing overdose and the transmission of HIV and HCV through drug use. As the longest standing private funder of harm reduction, she works closely with low barrier rural and urban syringe access programs and serves as a resource for best practices nationally, including advising SAMHSA on its national harm reduction framework published in 2024.
Mary serves as AFC’s Policy and Advocacy Chair. In 2020 she co-created the Chicago Racial Justice Pooled Fund moving $10 Million of philanthropic dollars by 2025 to Chicago community organizers building and sustaining movements for justice that center Black lives and address anti-Blackness. The commitment continues, with another $15M to community by 2031.
Previously she led UnitedHealthcare’s Central Region Corporate Social Responsibility, Medicaid implementation, and mergers/acquisitions. Mary received her master’s in public health at Northern Illinois University.
