Corinne Becknell-Lucas to Take the Helm of NICF

The Northern Indiana Community Foundation will have a new executive director at the end of April. Current Associate Director Corinne Becknell Lucas is taking over the helm then from Jay Albright, who’s retiring. She will begin the transition to her new role in January, overseeing the organization serving Fulton, Miami and Starke counties.

Before starting work for the NICF in 2002, Becknell Lucas worked in media production for the Internet Multicasting Service and Mappa.Mundi Magazine based in Washington, D.C. and the Internet start-up Invisible Worlds of San Francisco, while living in Northern Indiana. She supported media production for early Internet programming launches with organizations such as Networld+Interop, The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Press Club, Sun Microsystems, O’Reilly and Associates, Harper-Collins and other prominent technology and publishing companies. She was also employed at Lucas Law Office in North Judson, Indiana, and started the contemporary music program at Celebration United Methodist Church in Winona Lake. 

Before there was Alexa, there was Logana. While working in the tech world in the early days of the Internet’s introduction to the world, Becknell Lucas was the voice of Sun Microsystems. Known as “Logana,” her recorded voice would say commands and prompts for user interfaces. While working for the Internet Multicasting Service, she also worked with Vint Cerf, an American Internet pioneer recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet," and Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Becknell Lucas said a friend and local philanthropist recommended her to work for NICF.

“She said, ‘I think you would be really great for this position (of Starke County Community Foundation director),” said Becknell Lucas. “I hadn’t lived in Starke County that long, but it really gave me an opportunity to really understand what was going on in the community and the people as well and all of the good works that they do.”

By taking the job, Becknell Lucas said she became the first Starke County Community Foundation employee for the NICF. She said she came on at a time of transition: Cass County, which was originally part of the NICF, left to have its own community foundation and Pulaski County did the same not long thereafter. The NICF’s main office also moved from Logansport to Rochester. In addition to her associate director and senior leadership responsibilities, Becknell Lucas has held program management, scholarship, and marketing positions for the NICF. Becknell Lucas said she’s stayed in nonprofit management because “you get to see so many people and help them in so many different ways.”

“We can see a program that started from just from an idea … blossom,” she said, adding working for a community foundation is also about connecting donors to causes they care about. “We all kind of work together on our small communities,” said Becknell Lucas.

She noted working for community foundations in more rural areas does present some challenges.

“We’d always like to have more money, but just starting at the beginning, just knowing that people had said over 25 years ago we’ll never be able to raise enough money to have an endowment and now we do,” she said. “I have great shoes to follow in and just to continue incorporating all of the county directors together in the choices that we make here at the community foundation,” said Becknell Lucas of Albright.

Becknell Lucas has been a professional musician for over four decades. She plays and composes music with her husband, Martin Lucas, in the group Return to Normal. They regularly perform in Indianapolis, Culver, and at The Times Theater in Rochester.

She has a Nonprofit Executive Leadership certification from Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, a liberal arts degree from Ivy Tech Community College., and is currently completing a certification in Fund Raising Management from IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Becknell Lucas' daughter, Lissa Silotto has followed in her career footsteps, working here at IPA!