PROVIDENCE – Anna Cano Morales, the former Rhode Island College vice president of external relations and diversity, equity and inclusion who left the state-run school for unknown reasons and received a severance agreement afterward, recently returned to the Rhode Island Foundation to become the nonprofit funder’s new vice president of equity and inclusion.
The foundation announced that Cano Morales had previously spent 10 years working for the nonprofit funder in various senior-level positions, including as vice president of grants and programs and serving on the foundation’s equity leadership initiative steering committee.
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Now, Cano Morales will lead the organization’s work advancing equity, diversity, inclusion and access.
“This feels like a homecoming,” Cano Morales said in a statement. “I am excited to return to a place whose mission I know well and have embraced professionally and personally. If demographics are destiny, it is easy to see why ensuring that every Rhode Islander has the opportunity to thrive is crucial for the future of our state.”
Cano Morales had been with RIC for seven years from January 2017 through May 10, 2024. She had since received a $180,000 severance package from the college, plus monthly health care stipends for a seven-month period.
RIC officials declined to comment as to why Cano Morales left. The agreement noted that neither Morales nor RIC would file lawsuits or publicly make disparaging remarks against one another.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on X at @James_Bessette.
