The New York-based Ford Foundation has announced that Darren Walker, its 10th president, will leave his role by the end of 2025 after more than 11 years of service.

The foundation’s board will oversee a leadership transition process that will include a search committee composed of its board chair, Francisco Cigarroa, and board members Ursula Burns, Laurene Powell Jobs, Tom Kempner, Lourdes Lopez, Paula Moreno, and Ai-jen Poo.

Since 2013, Walker has overseen a “fundamental transformation” of the 90-year-old institution, reframing its mission in 2015 to address global inequality as its primary focus in the United States and around the world. During his tenure, the foundation has distributed grants totaling $7 billion, according to the New York Times.

Under Walker, the foundation not only changed its grantmaking, it also moved to the forefront of a philanthropic movement to undo the knot of inequality—born of the 20th-century industrial wealth that made Ford one of the largest foundations in the world—and invest in changing global systems. In 2019, Walker published From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth—updated in 2023—in which he contended that for philanthropy to be effective it must work to redress the anti-democratic impulses that historically have driven American culture, business, and philanthropy, noting that “the more level our playing field, the more we can use capitalism’s undeniable productive power to unlock better ideas for humankind.”

In 2015, the foundation launched its $1 billion Building Institutions and Networks initiative to bolster the capacity of grant recipients and amplify their impact. In 2017, Walker oversaw the redeployment of the foundation’s endowment toward mission-related investments. In 2020, Ford committed $1 billion—as part of a multibillion-dollar philanthropic coalition—to invest in long-term “social bonds” allowing the foundation to increase funding at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Walker also conceived and led the foundation in creating its Tech and Society program to expand the field of public interest technology as well as Ford’s first-ever program focused on disability rights.

“I am incredibly humbled and grateful to have had the opportunity and privilege to serve the Ford Foundation over these past 11 years. The work of the Ford Foundation is the work of generations, and I’m proud to have played a part in leading this storied institution,” said Walker. “I remain steadfast in my belief that the Ford Foundation is in the business of hope and in its future in pursuing a more just and equitable world.”

(Photo credit: Wikimedia/NikE523)