Pew Charitable Trusts. Office of the Executive Director.

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, Rebecca W. Rimel received an RN degree from the University of Virginia in 1973. For the next two years she worked as an emergency room nurse. In 1975 she was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia Medical School. The first nurse to hold a faculty position at the school, Rimel published widely on the treatment of head injury and trauma.

In 1982 she participated in a Kellogg foundation fellowship program designed to equip emerging leaders with the skills to deal with a variety of global problems. After earning an MBA from James Madison University the following year, she left Virginia to become a program manager in health with The Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Started by the heirs of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew in 1948, The Pew Charitable Trusts consisted of seven separate trusts administered by The Glenmede Trust Company. Rimel earned rapid promotions to assistant vice president, vice president responsible for funding in health sciences and, in 1988, to executive director. In 1994 she became president and CEO.

As executive director Rimel guided The Pew Charitable Trusts through a period of intense reorganization. In 1990 the trusts became one division of the Glenmede Trust Company. Separating Glenmede's non-profit grantmaking functions from its for-profit investment services established a distinct identity for The Pew Charitable Trusts. Rimel oversaw the subsequent creation of new grant categories: conservation and the environment, culture, education, health and human services, public policy and religion. The trusts' staff increased concomitantly. When she arrived in 1983 it employed only nine people. By 1993 they employed close to one hundred people. During this time the once low profile, Philadelphia-focused trusts began to invest in solutions to higher profile, national problems with Trust-initiated programs like The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences.