Featured Executive Commentaries:
Our first featured addition to our executive commentaries is from Steven B. Heintz, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. This comment, completed with support from DPP consultant Robin Templeton, addresses diversity in the context of increasing global interdependence and explains why U.S. philanthropy is a “primary source of risk capital for social change.”
For foundations working on global issues, diversity is essential. Simply put, you cannot conduct effective international work unless you embrace diversity and make it a core part of your philosophy, programmatic activities and internal operations. Grantmakers are increasingly adapting their policies and practices – from hiring to board appointments to direct work with grantees – to reflect the world in which we work. Read more.
Our second featured executive commentary is from Sterling K. Speirn, President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In the comment, also completed with support from DPP consultant Robin Templteton, he discusses Kellogg’s institutional commitment “to seek to eliminate racial disparities wherever we find them.”
The year after the celebration of the Kellogg Foundation’s 75th Anniversary, our Trustees conducted a probing evaluation of the most significant barriers we face today in carrying out Mr. Kellogg’s founding mission “to promote the health, happiness and well-being of children.” One of our conclusions was that, in order to address the needs of vulnerable children and families, we must confront the persistent role that racial inequity plays in exacerbating poverty. We felt the best way to capture and lift up Mr. Kellogg’s original donor intent was to acknowledge and confront the ways in which racism and poverty threaten the well-being of vulnerable children and their families in the United States. Read more.
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Gara LaMarche, President & CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies
Sherece West, President of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas
Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)