Winthrop Rockefeller Institute CEO Marta Loyd Retiring

The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on Monday announced that Executive Director & CEO Marta Loyd is retiring after eight years leading the nonprofit.

Loyd’s retirement is effective March 31, the organization said in a news release. The board of directors will conduct a search for her replacement.

Under Loyd’s leadership, the institute, which has about 60 full-time employees, has strengthened external partnerships, doubled the number of program offerings and implemented an evaluation system to measure impact, the release says. Loyd in 2018 secured a gift of more than $100 million from the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust to establish the Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller Endowment, which is held and managed by the University of Arkansas Foundation.

Dr. Stephanie Gardner, chair of the institute’s board of directors and provost at UAMS, said Loyd’s work has embodied Rockefeller’s legacy of problem solving through collaboration.

“Her impact on the institute’s work and on the organizations that looked to the institute for assistance is significant and lasting,” Gardner said. 

Loyd also helped steer the institute, located at Rockefeller’s adopted home atop Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, through challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Her first-rate leadership skills and the wonderful team she’s built around her are the epitome of the Rockefeller spirit of collaboration and transformational change, and their impact on the state and within this System are immeasurable,” University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt said. “She will be missed and I wish her all the best as she moves toward other mountain tops in her career and life.”

Loyd worked for 17 years as an administrator at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith before joining the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.

She told Arkansas Business in October that the institute was special because of “our people, our place and our process.”

“We are not the experts,” she said, “but we are experts in meeting design, and we guide our guests very intentionally, following the Rockefeller ethic, employing respectful dialogue, collaborative problem-solving and a diversity of viewpoints.”

She continued: “When you make that 20-minute winding drive up that mountain, you feel you’re leaving your work behind, leaving your other problems and issues behind. You feel that you’re arriving somewhere to do something important.”