United States

Vivek Malhotra

Director New York

Vivek Malhotra is the Ford Foundation's director for Equality and Justice. He oversees programming for the foundation's initiatives to advance immigrant and migrant rights, racial justice and minority rights, and civil and criminal justice reform, making grants in the United States, Mexico and Central America, South America, and China.

Vivek joined the Ford Foundation in 2011, bringing 14 years of public policy and legal advocacy experience as a strategist and policy advocate at the national, state and local levels in the United States and as an attorney in legal practice.

He held numerous leading positions at the American Civil Liberties Union, including advocacy and policy counsel with the national office, based in New York, where he developed and led nationwide strategies on immigrant rights and racial justice through a comprehensive program of policy advocacy, public education and litigation. He also worked as the national state strategist for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, building the capacity of 53 state affiliate offices around the country. In addition, he spent three years as legislative advocate lobbying on behalf of California affiliates on a range of constitutional rights issues.

Prior to his work at the ACLU, Vivek established Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, leading a team of three longstanding Asian American civil rights organizations in developing statewide policy agendas and mobilizing communities to engage in legislative advocacy in California. He also ran successful advocacy campaigns as policy advocate for Chinese for Affirmative Action, where he helped to pass local language-access laws in San Francisco and Oakland—the first localities in the country to enact such legislation.

Vivek began his career as a litigation associate with the law firm of Loeb & Loeb LLP in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of New York University's School of Law and of Pomona College.