Max Williams

Background

About Max Williams

My career has been dedicated to building relationships across stakeholders to address significant statewide and community challenges faced by many sectors in Oregon. In my most recent roles, I led the $3.7B Oregon Community Foundation through significant growth, reform, and transformation work and also played catalytic role as Director of the $1.4B Oregon Department of Corrections. These unique roles have given me an interesting vantage point to consider our state, from the perspective of an attorney representing private-sector clients with Miller Nash, as a state legislator, directing a significant state agency and leading Oregon’s largest statewide philanthropic organization. I have worked with clients, constituents, wealthy donors and powerful citizens, nonprofit leaders, adults in custody, teachers, farmworkers, lawmakers, and children and families in almost every imaginable circumstance. I’ve been privileged to engage with people from widely different ideologies, parties, faiths, races, and backgrounds. These perspectives have contributed to my understanding about how to bring people and organizations together and arrive at meaningful solutions that advance their mission. My time in the legislature exposed me to policy issues impacting all sectors of Oregon and as Judiciary Chair I focused on fairness in Oregon’s justice system. This led to an appointment by the Governor to run the Department of Corrections where I served at the center of criminal justice work. I am particularly proud of creating the Governor’s Reentry Council focused on improving public safety in Oregon and for my award-winning work improving mental health services within Oregon’s prison system. Since 2012, I’ve led and modernized the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) harnessing the power of philanthropy and helping it grow it from $1.2B-3.7B in total assets and to expand its impact by leveraging partnerships, creating new funding streams, and building trust-based coalitions with other funders and partners more than doubling our total grantmaking. When people ask me about the next step in my career, I tell them I care deeply about making Oregon a better place and seeking ways to leverage my unique toolkit and my systematic approach to leadership, strategy, and impact. I love developing a plan that helps organizations achieve their goals. I welcome the opportunity to connect.