Darren Walker, president of Ford Foundation, will step down by the end of 2025
Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, will step down from his role by the end of 2025
NEW YORK — If there are rock stars in philanthropy, Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, is one of them. And he's about to exit the stage.
Walker, 64, has been named one of Rolling Stone’s “25 People Shaping the Future” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People” as he led one of the original American philanthropies since 2013. The foundation said Monday that he will step down from his role by the end of 2025.
A search committee has been convened to find Walker's replacement, said Ford Foundation board chair Francisco Cigarroa.
Walker «has guided Ford through some of the most challenging moments of our time with grace, kindness, and empathy, and his tenure will be remembered as one of the most consequential periods in the institution’s nearly 90-year history,” Cigarroa said in a statement.
A former corporate attorney and chief operating officer of the Harlem-based Abyssinian Development Corporation, Walker oversaw major investments in advocating for gender equity and disability rights, interrogating the impact of new technologies, and leveraging the foundation's own assets for impact.
In describing his outlook, including in a 2021 interview with The Associated Press, Walker often referenced Dr. Martin Luther King, who he credited with saying, “philanthropy is commendable, but it should not allow the philanthropist to overlook the economic injustice that makes philanthropy necessary.”
Latanya Mapp, president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, called Walker an “icon' and ”a beacon,» for how to lead authentically in the struggle for social justice in a changing world.
“He has been able to, I
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