Malinda Berry Fischer has been elected as Interim President & CEO of Oklahoma State University Foundation to succeed Ron Area, who resigned after eleven years at the Foundation. Malinda has been a Trustee of the Foundation for over six years, and has most recently been serving as Vice Chairman/Chairman-Elect.
A native of Stillwater and a graduate of OSU as well as the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, Malinda has been active in OSU Foundation matters once she returned to Stillwater in 1995 to assume the duties of President & CEO of Thomas N. Berry & Company, a family oil and gas business. She and her husband, Dick, previously lived in Rochester, New York, where she worked extensively in the not-for-profit development field as a consultant and a certified fund raising executive (CFRE). She also participated in and chaired many civic organizations.
Currently, Fischer serves as Chairman of Thomas N. Berry & Company, President and CEO of The Marietta Royalty Company, and on the boards of directors of Heritage Trust Company, Leadership Oklahoma, OSU Foundation, OSU Friends of Music, and Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Locally, she was recognized in 2002 as an OSU Leadership Legacy, in 2000 with the Pillar Award by Sheerar Museum, in 1989 with the Stillwater Civic Achievement Award, and in 1985-90 served as the OSU Centennial Advisory Commission. She recently served on the board of the Oklahoma Arts Institute and chaired the Stillwater Museum Association.
Her maternal grandmother graduated from Oklahoma A&M in 1898 and her parents and brother are alumni as well. She had previously established the annual Wise-Diggs-Berry Award to recognize teaching excellence in the arts at OSU.
Malinda looks forward to working with the many alumni and friends of OSU to help the OSU Foundation implement new strategic planning. She notes that with Ross McKnight, Chairman of the OSU Foundation and Kirk Jewell, former President of the OSU Alumni Association, now the Foundation’s new CFO and COO, a very experienced team is in place to help OSU President David Schmidly achieve the goals being set for OSU.
