After spending years representing businesses in local chambers, Kevin Cooper will now fill a leadership position at one of the region’s most prominent foundations. The Gulf Coast Community Foundation announced on Thursday that Cooper would now serve as director of Community Investment. “I look forward to working with our donors and taking our endowment to activate parts of the community, areas where we know we can do better or identify areas where we are not in the game at all,” he said, “whatever it takes to make us a world-class place to be.”

Cooper most recently served as vice president of Public Policy and the Sarasota Tomorrow Initiative at The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, and before then led the Siesta Key Chamber of Commerce as executive director. He fills a post at Gulf Coast that opened up when Jon Thaxton was promoted to senior vice president of Community Investment; Thaxton’s move followed the promotion of former senior vice president Mark Pritchett to the role of president and CEO.

Cooper said he has been impressed for some time with the work of the Gulf Coast and feels the organization’s efforts have closely aligned with that done by area chambers, but he also relished to opportunity to serve the community with some of the human-focused initiatives. He was particularly impressed recently with a community leadership initiative done in conjunction with New College of Florida that offered insight on working with vulnerable populations including the homeless. “Those things that focus on populations are of strong interest to me,” Cooper said.