PRESIDENT

Cathleen D. Stone earned her B.A. and J.D. from American University and an L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. She was of counsel and a past partner of the Boston law firm Foley, Hoag & Eliot where her practice encompassed environmental and administrative law issues.

Ms. Stone is widely recognized as a philanthropic leader and trailblazer. Among other accomplishments, she founded the Stone Living Lab at UMass Boston, the Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship at UC Berkeley and the MAAH Stone Book Award. In the 1990s she served as the City of Boston’s first ever chief of environmental services and worked with Senator Kennedy, Congressman Moakley and others to establish the Boston Harbor Islands National Park. She currently serves as President of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation; as an appointed member of the partnership board for the Boston Harbor Islands National Park; on the board of directors for Boston Harbor Now and the Wilderness Society, and as a member of the Honorary Committee of the Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Award.

For over twenty-five years she served as a commissioner for the Boston Water and Sewer Commission. She also served as chair of the board of directors for the Museum of African American History and as a member of the boards of The Nature Conservancy, National Public Radio, the Supreme Court Historical Society, WBUR Boston, and MATCH Public Charter High School. In 2006, Ms. Stone received the Eleanor Roosevelt “Following In Her Footsteps Award” and in 2017 she received the Norman B. Leventhal Excellence in City Building Award. She received an honorary degree from University College London in 2024 and an honorary degree from UMass Boston in 2025.

CHAIRMAN

James M. Stone is the founder and CEO of the Boston-based Plymouth Rock Assurance Group. Mr. Stone was educated in the public schools of Pelham, New York, and at Harvard University where he received his BA and PhD in economics.

At Harvard, he received the Allyn Young Prize for the best undergraduate economics thesis and the Goldsmith Prize for the best research paper presented to the graduate school in economics. He graduated with highest honors in economics and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1969.

In 1975, Mr. Stone was appointed Insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts by Gov. Michael Dukakis. He was then appointed chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Mr. Stone served on the board of directors of The Boston Globe Newspaper Corporation from 1998 to 2006, and from 2012 to 2015 he was vice chairman of Global Post, a web-based international news service. Stone served for 10 years as a director and chairman of Management Sciences for Health, a leading provider of humanitarian health system support in over 40 countries around the world. He is currently the chairman of the Education and Commercial Relations Committees of the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a nonprofit genetics institute, and a member of the governing trust of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Stone is the author of Five Easy Theses (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) and an earlier book on the securities industry, as well as numerous articles on insurance, finance and economics. In 2024, he received an honorary degree from University College London.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Sonja Plesset is Executive Director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation and The Plymouth Rock Assurance Foundation. She has over twenty-five years of experience in philanthropy, research and higher education. Previous roles include Chief Advancement Officer at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Whitehead Institute, Lecturer at Harvard University, and Program Manager at the Yale School of Forestry.

Ms. Plesset received her BA from Cornell University where she graduated summa cum laude. She later earned her PhD in cultural anthropology from Harvard University. After completing her doctoral degree, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Public Health where she conducted research on eviction and health in a public housing community. Ms. Plesset is the author of Sheltering Women: Negotiating Gender and Violence in Northern Italy (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Ms. Plesset served as a member of the Advisory Board for Boston-based Girls on the Run and Youth Harbors. Currently, she serves on the Board of Trustees for Cathleen Stone Island Outward Bound Education School, on the Director's Advisory Board for the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), and as an Advisor to the Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Prize.