Rhett Mabry

Rhett became a member of Candid’s board in 2020. He joined The Duke Endowment in 1992 as associate director of the Health Care program area. In 1998, he was named Director of Child Care. During his tenure as Director of the Child Care, Rhett played a key role in redefining the Endowment’s approach to children’s services. The foundation expanded its Child Care beneficiary list beyond residential group care to include prevention and early intervention providers such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, child advocacy centers, child abuse prevention agencies and, under certain circumstances, the public child welfare system.

Rhett also helped lay the groundwork for a multi-million-dollar public-private effort to extend the Nurse-Family Partnership home visiting program’s services to thousands of first-time mothers across South Carolina. It marked the nation’s first Pay for Success project aimed at improving health outcomes for mothers and children in poverty.

Rhett was named vice president of the Endowment in 2009 and became president in July 2016. As president, he has begun carrying out the Board of Trustees’ vision for an organization-wide strategic focus on early childhood. He has also collaborated with program staff to refine grantmaking strategies and seek new ways to produce measurable impact and social change.

Rhett has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Master of Health Administration from Duke University. He has served on the North Carolina Governor’s Early Childhood Advisory Council and is a past board chair of the Southeastern Council of Foundations.