Management Team
Jennifer S. Vanica
Jennifer Vanica is the president and CEO of the Jacobs Family Foundation and Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, the developer of The Village at Market Creek, a 45-acre mixed-use cultural village planned, designed, built, managed, and owned by residents of San Diego’s southeastern neighborhoods.
A native of Ohio, Jennifer moved to San Diego after seven years of working in higher education to help start the Sharp Hospital’s Foundation in 1982. She worked over her six-year tenure to raise the private funds needed for a cancer center, intensive care unit, and the women’s hospital, before moving to the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation to build a new 130-bed emergency shelter for San Diego County’s children – the Polinsky Children’s Center. In 1991, Jennifer was hired by the Jacobs Family Foundation to design its grantmaking programs and in 1995, launched the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, an operating foundation which works in partnership with residents of the southeastern San Diego neighborhoods to change their community.
She is the recipient of the 1986 “Tribute to Women in Industry” Award for Sharp HealthCare, the 1991 Outstanding Service Award by the San Diego Child Abuse Coordinating Council, and was awarded the National Society of Fundraising Executive’s prestigious Development Executive of the Year in 1991 for her role in the Polinsky Children’s Center. In 2003, she was given the distinguished Alumni Citation Award by her alma mater, Wittenberg University.
Jennifer is married with three sons and two grandchildren.
Ron Cummings
Ron has 26 years of non-profit management experience and since 1995 has served as the chief operating officer of the Jacobs Family Foundation and Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation. In this role, Ron primarily develops and supervises staff and programs.
In the course of his career, Ron has developed three programs for at-risk youth, including a first-of-its-kind, in-home program using a neighborhood network model. He also served as program director for a 250-staff residential treatment center.
Before joining JCNI, he served as a non-profit consultant providing technical assistance to large multi-service agencies and grassroots start-ups, specializing in staff and program development. Ron has designed innovative training programs including “Finders Keepers,” an organizational values approach to staff hiring, evaluation, and retention.
Ron is a founder and former board member of the San Diego Foundation for Change. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from Indiana University, and a Master’s degree in English from Purdue University.
He is married and has three sons and two grandchildren.
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