After 13 years, Nina Vinik will be stepping down as director of the Joyce Foundation’s Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program at the end of June.
Her successor is Tim Daly, currently the senior program officer overseeing Joyce’s gun-policy portfolio.
The Joyce Foundation has played a pivotal role in building the evidence base for policy solutions to reduce gun violence and save lives, beginning with the Board of Directors’ support for developing the program in the mid-1990s.
Under Vinik’s leadership, the Foundation has launched seminal research behind firearms licensing, extreme risk protection orders, and other violence reduction measures; the pioneering of message research to understand the public’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors towards guns and gun violence; building grassroots organizing capacity among advocacy groups; and catalyzing new sources of support for the gun safety movement through the creation and leadership of the Fund for a Safer Future.
While at Joyce, and in the wider gun violence prevention movement, Vinik also has advanced ground-breaking work to embrace new approaches to policing and prosecution that minimize harms and racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and to promote activism among the next generation through her board leadership of March for Our Lives.
“Nina’s role as a national leader on gun violence prevention cannot be overstated,” said Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding. “In her years at Joyce, she’s had an incredible impact on one of the most challenging issues of our time.
“Fortunately for us, Tim’s intelligence and energy already have been a huge boon to the Foundation’s work on gun policy. I look forward to working together to help make our communities safer.”
Bringing years of legislative and advocacy experience from Capitol Hill and beyond, Daly will assume leadership of the program on July 1, working with Quintin Williams, a program officer managing Joyce’s justice reform work. Vinik will remain as a consultant to the Foundation through the end of the year.
Daly joined the Foundation in 2019. Previously, he served in several leadership roles in gun violence prevention in Washington, D.C., including managing director of the Guns and Crime Policy section at the Center for American Progress, and director of the House Democratic Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.
He also served as chief of staff and legislative director for two members of the U.S. House, and as a fellow in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
“I am humbled and excited by the opportunity to serve our region in this way,” Daly said. “This work -- building safe and just communities — is vitally important at this moment, and I am confident our team can continue supporting and advancing the effort in the months and years to come."
In her next role, Vinik will launch a new initiative focused on gun violence prevention through culture change, aimed at deploying evidence to counter the narrative that we need guns to make us safe.
“I am so proud of my tenure at the Joyce Foundation, working to prevent gun deaths and injuries and reduce the harms of the criminal justice system,” Vinik said. “I look forward to continuing my work to reduce gun violence, albeit in a new capacity.”
About The Joyce Foundation
Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.