Eileen Bloodgood Maler joined McKnight in February 2008 as program manager with the Neuroscience department. In this role she oversees a $3.8 million budget, coordinates three award programs, and organizes an annual conference. During her tenure, Eileen has successfully organized 14 annual McKnight neuroscience conferences, enabling more than 1,000 McKnight awardees to connect and share their research. As part of administering the award programs, Eileen processes more than 150 applications annually. Most recently, Eileen helped develop the McKnight Pecot Fellows, a new award mechanism that provides funding to a McKnight neuroscientist to hire a college student from a community underrepresented in neuroscience. Eileen is thrilled to be working on this new program to help address the lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the neuroscience field.
Eileen has dedicated her career to nonprofits in the arts and sciences, working in development with several arts organizations and universities. Prior to her current role at McKnight, she worked with several McKnight teams—developing opportunity/gaps analyses of several of McKnight’s former programs, and reviewing more than 700 grant reports.
Eileen received a BA in music from George Mason University and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas. She serves on the YMCA Camp du Nord board. Originally from Long Island, New York, Eileen moved to Minneapolis in 1992. She has lived and studied in Mexico City and once worked as an au pair in Paris, France. She loves hiking and snowshoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area with her husband and two grown sons.