Jane K. Stanley

Jane K Stanley joined the Board of the Nurture Nature Foundation in 2006 at the request of its founder, Theodore Kheel, who was then 92 years old and died a few years later. She soon began to take a very active role in the nonprofit’s affairs and was elected as Vice President. Currently, Stanley devotes the majority of her time to the business of the foundation and that of its affiliates.

Drawing on her decades of experience litigating complex financial issues and her knowledge of tax exempt organizations, Stanley has helped reform many aspects of NNF’s legal organization, including tax code compliance, relationships with affiliates, and real estate matters. She has also been instrumental in the foundation’s programmatic work, helping to devise new strategies and solutions and advance the standing of the nonprofit regionally and nationally.

Among other accomplishments, Stanley spearheaded the foundation’s campaign to raise consciousness of the need for low cost mass transit to reduce traffic congestion in city environments, providing funding for groundbreaking research in the area through Nurture New York’s Nature, which recently merged with NNF and is now a program of it. In connection with that work, she helped formulate public education outreach efforts, including facilitating conferences and media to promote transit reform. The work planted the early seeds for a transportation reform movement that has since garnered the support of a large number of other organizations and continues to grow.

In 2007, Stanley founded the Nurture Nature Center (NNC) to partner with NNF in Pennsylvania and she currently serves on its board of directors and is president of the organization. Stanley was instrumental in obtaining the seed funding for NNC, staffing it, procuring a facility for its operation and helping to formulate its vision. Under Stanley, NNC has established itself as a national leader in flood education earning accolades from the National Weather Service, National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society. NNC also serves as a resource for community education on local environmental risks, hosting conferences, talks, films and workshops in the museum-sized facility where it operates in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Prior to joining NNF, Stanley practiced and wrote primarily in the area of pension and welfare law. She served as Senior Editor of The Employee Benefits Law Treatise of the American Bar Association –  the leading reference source for lawyers on fiduciary responsibilities under ERISA to date. For over a decade, Stanley worked for the Solicitor's Office at the United States Department of Labor, Plan Benefits Security Division, where she was in charge of complex litigation involving misfeasance by fiduciaries of ERISA covered pension and welfare plans.

Stanley is a Fulbright Scholar and an honors graduate of Columbia Law School and Harvard. She is admitted to the New York State Bar; District of Columbia Bar; Bar of the U.S Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Second and Fifth Circuits; Bar of the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of New York and Maryland.

In addition NNF, Stanley serves on the board of the Nurture Nature Center and the TASK Foundation and was a board member of Nurture New York’s Nature until its merger with NNF.