The Convener
The room, the network and the deal, brings the right people together.
Darren Walker reads as The Convener because as president of the Ford Foundation he has spent a decade drawing governments, corporations, civil society, and philanthropic capital into shared missions of equity and justice. He expanded Ford's endowment capacity through social bonds and pressed philanthropy itself to reform, always assembling coalitions rather than dictating to them.
“Well, today we work in eleven regions of the world, including the United States, so we work in place-based strategies. But we start by asking the question, what's the greatest threat to human welfare? What's the greatest threat to our objective of a more just, fair, and peaceful world?”
“Now within that we ask, who are the populations of people who traditionally have had the least opportunity and whose welfare have been more at risk? And we begin with girls and women. Because around the world girls and women have traditionally been excluded and marginalized.”
“Well, philanthropy could never play the role of government. We're a rounding error in the federal government's budget. All of our assets together is a rounding era in the federal government's budget. So let's be real about. the potential. What we can do is catalyze, innovate, demonstrate, solutions.”
“Well, I think it's fair to say that we were very, very distressed by what happened during that period. But it was a slow, thoughtful, deliberative process that led us to our rebalancing of the portfolio. We have a policy that ensures that we at all times have sufficient liquidity.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “Darren Walker”
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