"...On Thursday, Mr. Walker, 53, will take the next step in a career that has taken him from Harlem to world-famous foundations five and a half miles away in Midtown Manhattan. He is to be named president of the Ford Foundation, the nation’s second-largest philanthropic organization. He will succeed Luis Ubiñas, who announced in March that he would step down.... In an interview, Mr. Walker said the Ford Foundation had weathered the recession and was ready to focus on new issues and initiatives. He said the endowment had rebounded to roughly where it was before the recession. It sank nearly 30 percent in 2009, to $8 billion. Mr. Ubiñas responded by cutting costs by $25 million a year, partly by trimming the 550-person payroll through voluntary buyouts and by streamlining the foundation’s operations, including reducing the number of field offices and renegotiating supplier contracts.... As a vice president, Mr. Walker has supervised more than 30 percent of the Ford Foundation’s grants, covering things like educational access and reproductive rights. He was responsible for grants for “Just Films,” a documentary motion-picture fund, and for “ArtPlace,” a public-private collaboration that supports cultural development in rural America. His portfolio also included four offices that handled regional programming in Africa and the Middle East..."
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 16:46:06 +0000
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