Laura Jean Watters
Executive Director
Laura Jean Watters joined The Staten Island Foundation as Program Officer in 2007. Prior to this position, she was the Executive Director of The Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI), the borough’s arts council, from 1993 – 2007. Significant projects during that period included re-establishing multiple state and city-funded local re-granting programs, creating a folk arts program to highlight Staten Island’s diversity, appointment to Mayor Bloomberg’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, and serving as the community liaison to the Staten Island 9/11 Memorial Project, Postcards. As program Officer, Laura Jean helped shape the Foundation’s results-oriented approach. She assisted nonprofit applicants to develop proposals that align with Foundation priorities and to identify concrete measurable outcomes. In addition, she worked closely with the Foundation’s founding Executive Director, Betsy Dubovsky, to establish The Staten Island Foundation Literacy Project (2008-2016) and The Staten Island Foundation Summer Literacy Project (2007-2010). When the Foundation received emergency funding in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, she helped manage the local re-granting effort. Since 2011, when the Foundation began to support the collective impact model of community collaboration, she has been an active participant, serving on multiple steering committees and work groups. In order to further the Foundation’s learnings, she participated in trainings with The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Franklin Covey; Beyond Diversity: Courageous Conversations, and Compassionate Systems offered by the Society for Organizational Learning, North America.
The Foundation Board appointed Ms. Watters Executive Director on August 5th, 2021, following Ms. Dubovsky’s untimely passing. One of her first assignments from the Board was to create a fellowship program in Betsy’s name: The Staten Island Foundation Elizabeth Dubovsky Fellowship in Social Work. The program launched in 2022 to strengthen the local field that provides essential services to Staten Island residents. Fellows receive financial support for otherwise unpaid social work internships as well as monthly sessions with local professionals. An annual conference for social workers grew from the Fellowship program. Under Watters leadership, the Foundation expanded the pool of applicants to include smaller organizations that had proven to be vital to the community during the events surrounding the COVID pandemic. She worked with Candid to establish access to the Funders Information Directory at the Foundation to encourage local nonprofits to seek funding from other sources. In 2025, she led the formation of the Diamond Matching Grant Program which has engaged 58 local nonprofits to secure new funding that will be matched on a 2:1 basis.
She serves on the NYCPS Arts Advisory Committee to the Panel of Educational Policy. She earned her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1990. She has 2 children: Steven and Carlene Nelson. Steven is married to Dana. They are the parents of Milo.