Familiar face for foundation

A woman who has done great good for Tidewater Community College will move to a charity that does good for all of Hampton Roads.

Deborah DiCroce, president of TCC since 1998, announced this week that she will become president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Hampton Roads Community Foundation in March.

DiCroce will succeed Angelica Light, who is retiring after a dozen years at the foundation. Light has led its transformation into a philanthropic powerhouse.

DiCroce's record at TCC shows the foundation has hired a successor who can spur growth in the organization's resources as well as shape and expand its role in the community. Skills honed at TCC will help DiCroce at the foundation.

TCC has seen incredible growth under DiCroce, from 30,000 students when she started in 1998 to 50,000 today. She has opened new campuses in Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, with classrooms that offer cutting-edge technology for students in nursing, mechanics, business.

Those branches helped transform their neighborhoods, spurring development and bringing higher education closer to the people it serves. Stronger relationships with the state's four-year colleges leave a clear path for TCC students who want more education.

A native of Hampton Roads, DiCroce has spent most of her adult life working to make it a better place. Her move to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation makes sense, both for the region and the organization. The foundation works to transform the community through philanthropy, using charitable gifts to provide grants and scholarships.

Light, the foundation's current leader, leaves the organization much stronger than she found it: She guided the merger of separate community foundations in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, forging an organization that doubled its assets to $244 million, and quadrupled its annual grants and scholarships to more than $12 million a year.

In June, the foundation announced it had awarded 369 scholarships for students who started college this fall, as well as giving $500,000 to help construct a YMCA in Norfolk's Park Place. Other awards helped dance and theater companies, museums and even TCC.

Thanks to Light's work, the foundation is poised to grow into an even bigger force in Hampton Roads.

DiCroce's vision for making her hometown a better place to live dovetails with the foundation's goal of regional leadership, in a place that could sorely use some.

The foundation will transition from one strong leader to another. Hampton Roads will be the better for it.