Openly Gay Black Man Named CEO of Ford Foundation

Darren Walker was recently named chief executive officer of the Ford Foundation. Walker is an openly gay, Black man who will run one of the largest charitable foundations in the world. According to Wikipedia, the Ford Foundation is currently ranked 5th in the world and has assets of nearly 11 billion dollars and hundreds of employees.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports:

Mr. Walker, a gay black man who grew up in a small town in Texas, worked for nearly a decade as a lawyer and bond salesman on Wall Street before giving up corporate life in 1995 to volunteer for a year at a school in Harlem.

He went on to become chief operating officer at Abyssinian Development Corporation, a community-development group in Harlem. Mr. Walker then worked for many years at the Rockefeller Foundation, before moving to Ford in 2010 as vice president for education, creativity, and free expression.

“The opportunity to lead the Ford Foundation is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone of my background, with the interest in social justice and the passion for social-change work that I have,” Mr. Walker said in an interview on Thursday.

Mr. Walker’s selection—he will officially take over in September—was widely praised by philanthropy peers, who described him as a well-connected and energetic manager with an unusual ability to build consensus among different groups of people.

Congratulations to Mr. Walker! I hope he is able to have an impact on focussing the Foundation's word on addressing inequality in the United States, especially inequalities based around race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.