Joanna Jackson isn’t a new face at the Weingart Foundation. She’s risen up the ranks at the Southern California grant maker, first as a program associate, then program officer, director, and vice president of programs. Finally, after 15 years, Jackson’s climb peaked when she was named the foundation’s president in June.
Jackson isn’t looking to make big changes to the mandate the foundation set in 2016, when it declared support of racial justice a cornerstone of its grant making. What she’d like to do, she says, is thoroughly examine what such a commitment means in how grantees are chosen, how they receive money, and what steps the foundation takes to advocate for causes publicly.
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Joanna Jackson isn’t a new face at the Weingart Foundation. She’s risen up the ranks at the Southern California grant maker, first as a program associate, then program officer, director, and vice president of programs. Finally, after 15 years, Jackson’s climb peaked when she was named the foundation’s president in June.
Some of the most recognizable names in the foundation world are stepping down. A new wave of leaders is taking their place.
Jackson isn’t looking to make big changes to the mandate the foundation set in 2016, when it declared support of racial justice a cornerstone of its grant making. What she’d like to do, she says, is thoroughly examine what such a commitment means in how grantees are chosen, how they receive money, and what steps the foundation takes to advocate for causes publicly.
“I’m looking to operationalize this commitment to racial justice and take it to the next level,” she says.
The foundation world is in transition. Weingart is one of many grant makers that have installed new leaders recently. Some of the most recognizable names in philanthropy are stepping down, and a new wave of leaders is taking their place.
Last year, the Carnegie Corporation named Dame Louise Richardson to replace Vartan Gregorian, Carnegie’s longtime leader who died in 2021. Alberto Ibargüen retired from the Knight Foundation in 2023 after 19 years on the job; his successor, a prominent newspaper executive, started in January. Earlier this year, the Hewlett Foundation turned to an astrophysicist to succeed longtime president Larry Kramer when he took over as president of the London School of Economics. And in October, Julie Morita, a veteran of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, became president of the Joyce Foundation in Chicago.
The highest profile transition is still to come: This summer, after more than a decade leading the Ford Foundation and bringing the work of philanthropy to a bigger audience, Darren Walker announced he would leave by the end of the year. The question of who will replace him has people buzzing far outside of the foundation’s boardroom, with some philanthropy observers compiling wish lists for whom they’d like to see in the spot.
As a result of the departures, philanthropy is undergoing what some are calling a sea change in leadership. “There are a lot of new faces at the table,” says Toya Fick, who became president of the Meyer Memorial Trust in Oregon in 2022.
A New Generation
Of the dozens of new private foundation leaders, a significant number have taken Jackson’s route at Weingart — not from high ranks in academia, business, or government, but from the day-to-day of dot-orgs.
Before reaching the top job, they filled out grantee reports. They shuttled to site visits to check on charities’ progress. They hired and fired staff. And many sat in front of foundation leaders, eager to secure a grant to get their nonprofits through the next year.
In other words, they are intimately familiar with the daily grind of philanthropy.
In addition to coming from nonprofits, the new group is younger and more diverse than their predecessors. Many of the new foundation presidents are from Gen X. More women also fill the top spot. And perhaps most notably, the percentage of private foundation leaders who are people of color has grown by 40 percent since the racial-justice protests of 2020, according to a survey conducted by the Council on Foundations.
Whether or not the new foundation leaders come into their jobs as change agents, change in philanthropy is afoot, says Kathleen Enright, president of the Council of Foundations. As battles over diversity, equity, and inclusion rage in board rooms and courts and suspicion of wealth socked away in foundation endowments grows, the new group of philanthropy leaders is poised to play a more public role defending their work and identifying and solving problems.
In the past, Enright says, foundations often relied on charismatic leaders to whip up interest in a cause. Today, she says, leaders are instead called upon to be unifiers, promoting a clear set of values, listening to the broader public, and inviting people to join in rather than dictate a plan. The times, she says, are calling on foundation leaders who can work collectively, with people representing a range of different views.
“Foundation boards used to want star power in their CEOs. They wanted a former ambassador or a university president,” Enright says. “But philanthropy requires its own set of skills.”
Many of the departing foundation presidents laid the groundwork for inclusive decision making, greater advocacy, or increased public transparency. The new presidents are often being called to put those ideas into practice with maximum effect, says Sam Gill, who started his job as the head of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in 2021, at age 38.
Tanya Rosen-Jones
Tina Kimbrough was tapped to lead the Nord Family Foundation at age 34.
For Gill, that means using all the tools at a foundation’s command — the grant making, communications, thought leadership, intensive data collection, and research — to a more “radical extent” than his predecessors. Gill is only the third Doris Duke leader, coming to the job after nearly six years at the Knight Foundation.
Other newly minted foundation leaders also come directly from philanthropy.
Julie Morita served as a vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation before being picked to succeed 22-year veteran Ellen Alberding at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago. Binaifer Nowrojee served in various leadership positions at Open Society Foundations before being picked in March to lead the philanthropy founded by George Soros. After serving as assistant admissions director at Oberlin College, Tina Kimbrough became a program officer at the Nord Family Foundation in Ohio, where she is now the president.
Other examples of nonprofit pros jumping into leadership abound. Brenda Solórzano at the California Endowment? She led the Headwaters Foundation in Montana and previously worked at the endowment as a program officer. Sara Allan at the Valhalla Foundation? She was picked to lead the grant maker, which was founded by Intuit co-founder Scott Cook and his wife, Signe Otsby, this year after 12 years at the Gates Foundation. The Ford Family Foundation, the Meyer Memorial Trust, and the Pohlad Family Foundation all chose new leaders in the past two years who are Gen X women of color with nonprofit experience already etched into their résumés.
DEI or Group Think?
After serving as a program officer and interim president at the Nord Family Foundation, Kimbrough, who is Black, was tapped in 2023 to become the northern Ohio grant maker’s permanent leader. She was 34 and eight months pregnant.
Her job, she says, was to formalize the foundation’s historical grant-making process, which prioritized advancing racial equity and “trust-based philanthropy,” a style of grant making that has grown in popularity since the pandemic, especially among new leaders. Trust-based grant making is driven by the idea that foundations should look outside their walls for expertise and cede power to grantees on how grant money is used.
Leadership can look different and act different and still be incredibly effective.
“We really just put everything that we have been doing for 20-plus years down on paper” to formalize the foundation’s new strategy, she says.
At Weingart, Jackson is also trying to translate her trustees’ vision for racial justice into concrete action.
Doing so requires shifting from a traditional top-down style of leadership at Weingart to focus on developing relationships both within and outside the organization. Using the so-called soft skills of bringing people together, fostering relationships, and listening deeply, Jackson sees her work as a means to continue the movement for civil rights that her parents and grandparents participated in.
Says Jackson: “Leadership can look different and act different and still be incredibly effective.”
The body blow of the pandemic led many foundations to ditch some of their previous practices. They attempted to push more money out the door, especially to groups led by people of color, who were disproportionately hit, and in many cases, foundations gave grantees more leeway in how to use their grants.
The response by philanthropy raised expectations for how quickly and dramatically foundations would change grant-making practices and place people in leadership reflecting greater diversity, says Marcus Walton, president of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Too often, Walton says, trustees aren’t fully on board with the changes envisioned by new leaders, and they aren’t accustomed to leaders who emphasize advocacy, cooperation, and collaboration. As a result, many new leaders feel isolated. He says there’s a risk boards will stop looking to women and people with a variety of cultural backgrounds to lead.
“The challenge is that there’s no playbook,” he says. “You can’t point to a blueprint or go to a website and say, ‘This is how you do it.’”
By drawing from the nonprofit world for many new leaders and emphasizing equity, many foundations are becoming indistinguishable from one another, says Michael Hartmann, a senior fellow at Capital Research Center, a conservative philanthropy research and advocacy nonprofit.
He says some grant makers with a conservative or free-market bent have also placed more emphasis on equity. He points to Romanita Hairston taking the top job at the Murdock Charitable Trust in 2022 as an example. Before she became president of Murdock — succeeding Steve Moore, who retired after 16 years — Hairston worked at World Vision and also at Microsoft, where she ran her department’s DEI initiative.
With more nonprofit veterans leading foundations, Hartmann says, the sector is susceptible to group think.
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Many new leaders feel isolated because of board friction, says Marcus Walton, president of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
“There’s not a wide net being cast for these jobs,” he says, explaining that when the same types of progressive résumés keep rising to the top of the pile, it’s almost as if a cartel was shaping these searches.
Joanne Florino, a member of a different conservative organization, says too narrow a focus on “radical” change misses the idea — and formal stipulation, in many cases — that the majority of foundation leaders strictly adhere to the intent of the grant maker’s original donor. Florino is the Adam Meyerson Distinguished Fellow in Philanthropic Excellence at Philanthropy Roundtable, a conservative donor and foundation network.
That’s the case at Murdock, she says, where Hairston has stayed true to the foundation’s mission to expand the capacity of nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest and improve the educational, spiritual, and cultural offerings in the region.
“Though donor intent is frequently disregarded when the popular focus is on change, most foundations are determined to pursue values-based giving and to protect donor intent,” Florino said in a statement.
Hairston says the foundation has incorporated equitable grant making into its work in a number of ways, such as by focusing on nonprofits’ highest priorities, asking grantees whether they are including input from a wide range of stakeholders, and tailoring grants to an individual nonprofit’s needs rather than using a competitive process.
“Equity ensures that everyone has access to the same opportunities, but the support provided is tailored to individual needs,” Hairston said in a statement. “This is essential in philanthropy.”
‘An Opening for Visionary Leadership’
The most watched job vacancy in philanthropy is no doubt at the Ford Foundation, which is looking to find a successor to Darren Walker. He will leave the $16 billion-plus grant maker by the end of the year.
Ford Foundation
Whoever the Ford Foundation’s board picks to succeed Darren Walker can’t be afraid to stick their neck out and be vocal, even in uncomfortable situations, says Hilary Pennington, one of Walker’s top lieutenants.
In Walker, the first Black gay man to head the institution, Ford had a once-in-a-generation leader who combined charisma, vision, celebrity, and expertise, according to those inside and outside of Ford. Like many in the group of rising private foundation leaders, Walker had extensive stints in both nonprofit and foundation jobs before taking over at Ford in 2013.
Walker made it a priority to provide grantees with multiyear, no-strings-attached grants. Many new foundation leaders have used Walker’s long-established focus on equity and attempts to re-tilt the imbalanced dynamic between foundations and grantees as a guide.
Whoever the Ford board picks to succeed Walker can’t be afraid to stick their neck out and be vocal, even in uncomfortable situations, says Hilary Pennington, one of Walker’s top lieutenants. She is leaving her job as Ford’s executive vice president of programs at the end of the year.
Civil-society organizations have been on their back foot in recent years as many of the issues they support, including climate, gender equality, and democracy funding, become wedge issues used to distract and polarize people, Pennington says.
“Foundations will need to understand that navigating a polarized context is a core competency they and their grantees will need,” she says.
Foundations will need to understand that navigating a polarized context is a core competency they and their grantees will need.
Amir Pasic, dean of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, agrees. He says the nonprofit world may face the most dramatic rewrite of charity law since 1969 as Congress delves into a set of expiring tax policies next year. The Tax Reform Act of 1969, which created many of the rules foundations still abide by today, is “fraying at the edges,” as foundations’ lack of accountability has spurred a growing distrust of concentrated wealth in many quarters, Pasic says.
Rather than simply trying to defend the status quo, Pasic says, the new foundation leaders have an opportunity to communicate the benefits of philanthropy to a broader public and create new regulations that will make it more effective.
“There is an opening for visionary leadership,” he says.
Note: The Ford, Hewlett, and Open Society Foundations are financial supporters of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Before joining the Chronicle in 2013, Alex covered Congress and national politics for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He covered the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns and reported extensively about Walmart Stores for the Little Rock paper.
