Pew Charitable Trusts. Office of the President.

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 university's medical school, Rimel published widely on the treatment of head injury and trauma.

In 1982 she participated in a Kellogg foundation fellowship program aimed at equipping emerging leaders with the skills to deal with an array 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 the health sciences and, executive director and, in 1994, to president and CEO.

As executive director Rimel guided The Pew Charitable Trusts through a period of intense reorganization. The once low profile, Philadelphia-focused trusts began to invest in solutions to high profile, national problems. They continued to extend their reach with Rimel as president an CEO. In 1995 they assumed sponsorship of the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. The conservation and environment program grew most significantly. In May 1998 the trusts gave 5.2 million dollars to start the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, D.C. Critics maintained that under Rimel the trusts had severed their ties to Philadelphia and to the vision of their politically conservative founders. Although the trusts did sell the remainder of their Sun Oil Company stock in 1998, they also played a central role in Philadelphia's efforts to promote regional development in the late 1990s.