About the Foundation

George Ball

Chairman, W. Atlee Burpee Company
Founder, The Burpee Foundation

During the late 1960s, 70s and early 80s, Mr. Ball apprenticed with the legendary genius plant and seed grower, breeder and explorer Claude Hope in Costa Rica. He spent his later career at Pan American Seed in Illinois, California and the UK, during which time he developed innovative plants and seeds, including the first pink hypoestes, ‘Think Pink’, and the first large‐flowered anemone, ‘Mona Lisa’. In 1991, Ball purchased iconic garden seed giant, W. Atlee Burpee & Company. He has also donated tons of vegetable seed to Sub‐Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Awards:

Outstanding Achievement Award from the Horticulture Society of New York

President's Medal of Appreciation from the American Horticultural Society

Doctor of Science, honoris causa awarded by Delaware Valley University

Mel Barkan

Executive Director, The Burpee Foundation

Mr. Barkan is the Executive Director as well as a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. He attended Carnegie Mellon University and obtained his Bachelor of Arts and JD degrees from New York University.  After clerking for a United States District Court Judge, he became an Assistant U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and then a partner and, for approximately 30 years, the head of the Litigation Department of the New York law firm of Brauner Baron Rosenzweig & Klein LLP, which was combined with Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, from which Mr. Barkan recently retired.  Mr. Barkan continues serving on the approved panel of mediators for the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, on which he has served for many years, mediating commercial as well as police misconduct civil rights and wrongful conviction cases pursuant to Court appointments.  During the mid-1990s, Mr. Barkan served as the Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board shortly after it became a separate agency independent of the NYPD and he was widely lauded for achieving rapid improvement in that agency. In addition to the Burpee Foundation, Mr. Barkan has long served on the Boards and periodically as an officer of a number of not-for-profit organizations, including large organizations which serve underserved populations (the homeless and those suffering from severe mental illness) and the elderly as well as two other grant-making foundations.

David A. Brauner

Director, The Burpee Foundation

David A. Brauner, a graduate of Dickinson College and Columbia Law School is Counsel at Windels Marx Lane and Mittendorf, LLP in New York City.  His practice is concentrated in the areas of estate planning and the administration of estates and trusts, real estate transactions and the representation of owners and cooperatives, and a broad variety of corporate matters. Mr. Brauner provides counseling and advice principally to privately owned, entrepreneurial business entities and their owners and executives. Mr. Brauner was formerly a member of Brauner Baron Rosenzweig and Klein, LLP. He served as a VISTA volunteer assigned to the Denver County Court in Denver, Colorado from 1966-1967 and was the recipient, the following year, of the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship.

Long active in philanthropic and community affairs, Mr. Brauner is also a director of the Herman Goldman Foundation and the Helen Matchett DeMario Foundation, as well as a director and past President of The Bridge, Inc., a social service, housing, and advocacy agency for the mentally ill and a former director of DOROT, a not-for-profit agency providing services to the homebound elderly. He has been listed in Who's Who in American Law and Who's Who in America and was also named in Best Lawyers in America for 2023.