Leadership

Board of Trustees

Ford Foundation trustees set policies relating to grant making, geographic focus, spending, investment, management, governance and professional standards, and they oversee internal and independent audits. They also set the compensation and review the performance of the president and all foundation officers.

Our Board of Trustees is currently composed of 13 members, including the president. Nominated by a trustee committee and appointed by the full board, trustees generally serve two six-year terms. The board, board committees and individual trustees are evaluated on an annual basis by our Executive Committee.

Foundation trustees bring a vast range of knowledge and experience to the task of governing the foundation. Over the years, trustees have hailed from four continents and have extensive experience in the worlds of higher education, business, law, government, nonprofit management and the civic sector.

Portrait	Name	Title and Address
	Irene Hirano Inouye	Chair of the Board President U.S.-Japan Council Washington, D.C.
	Luis A. Ubiñas	President New York, N.Y.
	Kofi Appenteng	Partner The West Africa Fund Partner Constant Capital Redding, Conn.
	Tim Berners-Lee	Professor School of Engineering, and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass. Professor School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton South Hampton, United Kingdom
	Afsaneh M. Beschloss	President and Chief Executive Officer The Rock Creek Group Washington, D.C.
	Martin Eakes	Co-Founder and CEO Self-Help CEO Center for Responsible Lending Durham, N.C.
	Juliet V. García	President University of Texas at Brownsville Brownsville, Tex.
	J. Clifford Hudson	Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Sonic Corp. Oklahoma City, Okla.
	Robert S. Kaplan	Senior Associate Dean for External Relations Martin Marshall Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration Harvard Business School Boston, Mass.
	Thurgood Marshall Jr.	Partner Bingham McCutchen Principal Bingham Consulting Group Washington, D.C.
	N.R. Narayana Murthy	Chairman Emeritus Infosys Limited Bangalore, India
	Peter A. Nadosy	Managing Partner East End Advisors, LLC New York, N.Y.
	Cecile Richards	President Planned Parenthood Federation of America Planned Parenthood Action Fund New York, N.Y.

The President

The trustees select the president, who implements board policies and oversees foundation programs and operations on a day-to-day basis. The trustees and the president share the responsibility of representing the foundation in the public sphere along with other senior staff. The president continually re-examines our work, looking for opportunities to hone our strategies and improve our effectiveness. The president meets with people around the world to help deepen the foundation's grasp of different perspectives on how to solve problems. In addition to overseeing operations, the president works to communicate what we have learned to a broad array of audiences and strives to strengthen the philanthropic sector's performance, legal compliance and transparency.

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The Board's Oversight of Grant Making

Our Board of Trustees determines the substantive areas and geographic focus of the foundation's grant making. Within the budget approved by the board, the foundation makes about 1,400 grants throughout the year. The board has delegated authority for approving these grants to the president and senior staff. However, all trustees serve on one of the board's three program committees, which help design program strategy. Membership on the committees rotates so that trustees serving 12 years become steeped in the work of all three program areas and contribute to their development and assessment. The trustees review approved grants at their regular board meetings, which take place three times a year. At those meetings, and during annual board visits to grantees worldwide, trustees meet grant recipients and learn about their work.

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Trustee Independence

The Ford Foundation places high value on the independence of our board members. We require that a majority of our trustees be independent, that all trustees serving on the Audit and Membership (nominating) committees be independent, and that trustees on the Audit Committee satisfy additional standards of independence. When the staff proposes that the foundation fund an organization with which a trustee is affiliated as an employee, officer or trustee, that grant must be reviewed and approved by the Audit Committee. The grant action document—which is reviewed and approved by management before submission to the Audit Committee—discloses the nature of the trustee affiliation and confirms that the trustee played no role in the initiation or negotiation of the grant.

Learn more about the foundation's governance policies.