Mally Cox-Chapman ’66 and James W. Cox-Chapman, M.D. ’66

November 2018 – Mally Cox-Chapman ’66 and James Cox-Chapman ’66 met in sixth grade at Renbrook School and are both members of the Class of 1966.

Mally is the founder of Benefactory Philanthropic Advisors, a consulting firm that provides strategic advice to high-net-worth families and their foundations. Mally and her team help philanthropists articulate and hold to their mission. They pair foundations with non-profits that will aid the foundation in achieving its goals. They educate trustees both in their fields of interest and on effective board management. One of her proudest accomplishments with Benefactory is being the catalyst for a five-year initiative to put arts education in every school in Cambodia.

Mally graduated from The Ethel Walker School and earned her BA cum laude in political science from Yale University, in its first class of women. She was a writer-in-residence at Germantown Friends School for ten years and has written three books. One of them, The Case for Heaven, has been translated into four languages and is still available in print after 23 years.

Mally has appeared frequently on radio and TV shows, including NBC’s Dateline and the 2006 Connecticut Public Television documentary Wealth in CT. She has served on numerous boards, including The Ethel Walker School, Watkinson School, Connectikids, CT Humanities, and the Connecticut Center for School Change.

Mally currently serves on the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art board and teaches sewing at the Boys and Girls Club of Hartford.

In 1997, Jim and two other colleagues founded ProHealth Physicians, a large, statewide medical group. Through ProHealth, Jim and his colleagues sought to empower physicians to practice exemplary primary care by improving access and quality while at the same time lowering the overall cost of care.

Under his direction as chief medical officer, ProHealth became one of the nation’s cutting-edge medical groups and currently cares for over 10% of Connecticut’s population. In 2015, ProHealth was acquired by Optum, a division of United Healthcare, and is now a cornerstone of Optum’s effort to build a national healthcare delivery system.

Before founding ProHealth, Jim graduated from Philips Academy Andover, Williams College, and Temple University Medical School. After completing an internal medicine residency at a University of Pennsylvania training hospital, he returned to Connecticut and joined a small practice in Bloomfield. While practicing, he achieved board certification in geriatrics and served as one of the first medical directors at Duncaster Life Care Community.

Jim serves as a director of the Mclean Foundation, the Brainard Fund of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and the Island Commons, an assisted living facility in Maine. Past directorships include the Connecticut Center for Primary Care and Pine Island Camp.

As Renbrook alumni, they have been loyal ambassadors to the school throughout their lives. They support the Renbrook Fund, and Mally has served in various volunteer roles at Renbrook, including as a Corporator. She shares that being Head of Renbrook Gardens and working with former CFO Mark Loether to keep the grounds at the school beautiful was her favorite volunteer position. Mally and Jim live in Hartford and on an island in Maine. They are long-time members of Asylum Congregational Church and the parents of two children, both of whom graduated from Renbrook. Lucy ’99 has a Master’s in Public Health and is a healthcare policy advocate. Jay ’02 has an MBA and works in the tech world.