About the Foundation

The Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation is a 501( c)(3) private foundation that makes charitable investments in support of medical research, education, and communities.

Established in 2002, the foundation seeks to create positive change within three core issue areas. Through strategic grantmaking, we invest in organizations that accelerate medical and scientific discovery, enable access to educational and economic opportunity for young people, and enrich and strengthen the communities where our founders live and work. We review grant proposals on an invitation-only basis and regrettably cannot accept unsolicited funding requests

Our Team

Carol Ludwig, MD
Co-Founder and President

Carol Ludwig is a neurologist and the President of the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation. She supports medical research, particularly in the neurodegenerative diseases, and educational opportunities for low- and moderate-income students. She serves on the Council of Medical Advisors for the Columbia University Irving Medical Center where she is part of the Neurology Advisory and Medical Education Committees and the Precision Medicine Council. Carol is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Carol also serves on the Board of KIPP DC and has supported KIPP in improving the college persistence of their alumni, nationally.
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A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and The Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, she was a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service. She has worked at the National Institutes of Health, The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and as a faculty member in the Dept. of Neurology at the George Washington University Medical Center. She lives in Washington, D.C., and she and her husband have three children. She has previously served on the Boards of the Beauvoir School, The Septima Clark Charter School, The National Capital Poison Center, PEN-Faulkner, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Gene Ludwig
Co-Founder and Vice President

The Honorable Eugene A. Ludwig, 27th Comptroller of the Currency, is a business and civic leader and expert on banking, regulation, risk management, and fiscal policy. He is managing partner of Canapi Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on investments in early to growth-stage fintech companies, and CEO of Ludwig Advisors, which counsels financial firms on critical matters. He is the founder and former CEO and chairman of Promontory Financial Group, where he was an IBM executive after the firm was acquired in 2016. He is also the founder and former CEO and chairman of Promontory Interfinancial Network (now IntraFi).

In 2019, Mr. Ludwig founded the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the economic well-being of middle- and lower-income Americans. LISEP aims to provide a more transparent view of the economic situation of all Americans through its economic indicators, including the True Rate of Unemployment (TRU), True Weekly Earnings (TWE), and True Living Cost (TLC).

As U.S. comptroller of the currency from 1993 to 1998, Gene served as the Clinton administration’s point person on the policy response to the credit crunch of the early 1990s. Under his purview, lending to low- and moderate-income Americans increased tenfold, as did national bank investments in community development corporations. He brought 27 fair-lending cases, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in fines against violators. Gene graduated magna cum laude from Haverford College and earned a J.D. from Yale University.

Bob Barnett
Director

Robert B. Barnett is a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation. He has a diverse practice representing national and international corporations and individuals on a wide variety of matters.

Bob represents major corporations in litigation matters, corporate work, contracts, crisis management, transactions, government relations, and media relations. During his more than forty years of practice, he has represented clients before almost every executive department and administrative agency in Washington. His clients have included JM Family Enterprises, USAA, Walmart, Toyota, Deutsche Bank, Discovery Communications, Comcast, MacAndrews & Forbes, Revlon, the NBA, Southeast Toyota, Promontory Financial Group, McDonald's Corporation, General Electric, and Toll Brothers, among others.

Bob is one of the premier authors' representatives in the world. He is also one of the leading representatives of television news correspondents and producers as well as former government officials in conjunction with their transitions to the private sector.

Louie Giacomini
Director

Louie serves as Chief Operating Officer of SpringHarbor Financial Group, and Ludwig Advisors, which counsels financial institutions on their most significant regulatory challenges, providing strategic and operational leadership. His deep expertise in financial services and regulatory compliance, honed through years of experience leading Promontory Financial Group's managed-services business, informs his strategic decision-making.

Prior to Promontory, he began his career in financial services gaining extensive experience in the issuance and management of mortgage-backed securities, working with the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and leading large-scale forensic reviews. Louie's expertise covers a variety of risk and compliance focus areas including anti-money laundering, consumer compliance, and third-party risk management.

Louie holds a B.S. in Finance and Human Resource Management from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Amanda Kramer Borden
Chief Strategy & Operations Officer

Amanda works with the team and Board on strategic funding priorities, policies, and practices to help maximize the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation’s impact. She has held a mix of roles in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, which inform the perspective she brings to the Foundation’s work.

Amanda co-founded and served as Executive Director of School Leader Lab, an organization training principals and teacher leaders across Washington, D.C. and Kansas City. She was also part of the senior leadership team at KIPP DC, overseeing external affairs, talent, and strategy work.  Amanda started her career in the corporate sector, working in strategy, innovation, and brand management at Diageo, as well as in investment banking.

Amanda earned an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in Education Leadership through the Broad Residency in Urban Education, and bachelor’s degrees in Business and Psychology from Washington University.  She also participated in the Equity Lab’s Seeding Disruption Fellowship.

Meghan Behnke
Education Program Officer

Meghan is a passionate college and career access advocate who has devoted her career to working with organizations committed to ensuring that students receive the high-quality education and resources that they deserve and will lead to choice-filled lives.

Meghan’s work in the education and non-profit sectors has focused on supporting postsecondary success for students from low-income communities. She most recently served as the Deputy Director of the KIPP Through College & Career Program at KIPP DC. During her decade-long tenure there, Meghan played a key leadership role in operationalizing KIPP DC’s comprehensive alumni support program, including the establishment of its highly successful emergency grants program, which has been replicated in KIPP regions across the country.

Meghan earned a B.S. in English Education from Boston University.

Diana Shineman, PhD
Medical Program Director

Diana Shineman, PhD, is a cell and molecular biologist with over fifteen years’ experience in the nonprofit sector leading medical research programs. Prior to joining the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation, Diana was the Vice President of Research and Medical Programs at the Tourette Association of America (TAA) where she supervised a team to increase awareness, promote public health efforts, support research, and improve medical care for those affected by Tourette Syndrome and related disorders. Prior to TAA, Diana spent nine years at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation where she directed the Foundation’s drug discovery and development grant programs and led strategic initiatives with foundation, government and industry partners.

Diana earned a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research and a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University, where she was named a Howard Hughes Research Scholar.  Diana has also authored numerous articles and peer-reviewed publications.

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