Our Staff

CEO T. Duane Gordon, left, with Community Shares' 2019-2020 Fall Campaign Co-Chairs Yvette Simpson and Joe Hoffecker, who also served as honorary co-chairs of our 2019 Gourmet Grub for Good fundraising event.

T. Duane Gordon has served since 2019 as CEO of Community Shares of Greater Cincinnati, the region’s federation of social and economic justice charities, environmental sustainability organizations, and animal welfare agencies.

His philanthropic career spans more than two decades in non-profit leadership including more than a decade as CEO of Middletown Community Foundation and nearly a decade at the Community Foundation for Mississippi.

Duane has been recognized as Cincinnati State Technical and Community College’s Middletown Outstanding Community Leader, the Middletown Family YMCA Celebration of Character Awards’ Champion of Youth Development and Chamber of Commerce Serving Middletown, Monroe, and Trenton’s Entrepreneurial Community Spirit Award recipient. He has served on the United Way of Greater Cincinnati’s Success by 6 Regional Leadership Council.

He currently serves as a delegate representing the Ohio River Valley District of the United Methodist Church on the Delegates Council of the Metropolitan Area Religious Council of Cincinnati (MARCC). He was founder and director for 10 years of the Middletown-area affiliate of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, distributing more than 250,000 free books in that time to over 10,000 local preschoolers in the local community. His mentorship of dozens of other affiliates of the program throughout Ohio laid the groundwork for its eventual expansion to a statewide initiative under First Lady Fran DeWine in 2020.

He was also a founding board member for the Middletown Community Building Institute at Miami University, Middletown Campus Advisory Committee for Cincinnati State, and Butler County National Philanthropy Day Committee. Duane is past president of the Middletown Kiwanis Club, a Rotarian, and hosted “Foundation Matters” on TV Middletown for seven seasons.

Early in his career, Duane was an award-winning investigative journalist for the Madison County Journal in suburban Jackson, Mississippi. He received his BA in Communications and Journalism from Mississippi State University.

He is married to public defense attorney Matthew Dixon, who is a Cincinnati-area native and his partner of 27 years, and they are the parents of 9-year-old Tommy and 4-year-old Dolly.

dgordon@cintishares.org

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Stephanie Cornett was hired in mid-2022 as our Development Officer.In her new role, Stephanie will assist in fundraising activities to benefit both Community Shares and its member charities interacting with individual donors, corporate workplaces, and foundations.

Stephanie believes in the power of communities to create social change and has spent her career dedicated to making this belief a reality. She co-created Imago’s EarthSpirit Rising Conference; spent a decade as Senior Producer of the PGA-sanctioned World Cup of Golf, a charity spreading international goodwill; and served as Executive Director for Lyrics for Life, a music-based charity raising funds and awareness for childhood cancer. She also served as part-time Development Director for the Dearborn County Community Foundation. Social Innovation and Action are a thread throughout her life, and whether as a profession or as a personal passion, she remains committed to it.

Stephanie thrives on the challenge of creating and implementing new ideas, events, and programs. Time spent working with Larry Huston, former VP of Innovation at Procter & Gamble, at his firm 4iNNO, provided a great understanding and working knowledge of the innovation process and the ability to further embrace exploration and collaboration which added to and more finely honed her mentality to connect and develop projects and people. A decade of experience producing talk radio locally and nationally, including Jerry Springer's political radio talk show out of Cincinnati, adds to her communication expertise.

Stephanie has a B.A. in psychology from the Union Institute and University and is Certified in Principles and Techniques of Fundraising from Indiana University.

When she’s not at work, Stephanie spends her time creating projects such as Appalachian Strong, a movement to change the perception of Appalachian people. She hosts Silent Reading Circles and Writing Circles at the House of Friends Cincinnati and is currently creating a project to bring together women in re-entry and in recovery with women who have other life-based trauma through art, crafts, and retelling personal stories.

scornett@cintishares.org

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Claire joined us in August of 2023. She grew up in the Cincinnati area and received her BIS in Interdisciplinary Studies, Family Studies. She focused her studies to sociology, women’s studies, and anthropology.

Claire began her career at The Children’s Home of Cincinnati (now Best Point) as the Early Childhood Administrative Assistant. She then switched careers to join The Modal Shop, an engineering firm focusing on sound and vibration testing equipment, to work on the International Sales Team. Most recently she was the Assistant Director of Internal Operations at Xavier University. Claire is a highly motivated individual with abilities in a wide variety of areas including process improvement, problem solving, interpersonal communication, and excellent knowledge of systems.

During Claire’s career, she has concentrated on building relationships with whomever she comes into contact with. Her work in many different and diverse communities has also enabled her to identify unique opportunities for individual situations. She focuses on data driven outcomes for continuous quality improvement.

Claire is an avid animal lover. She has one son, Elliot, and a very large extended family. She enjoys reading, being with friends and family, gardening and generally hanging out at her home in Northside.

homanc@cintishares.org

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