George Davis leads Ford’s philanthropy grantmaking portfolio, which focuses on ensuring that the U.S. philanthropy field has capacity to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. He also serves as the BUILD program officer for several grantmaking teams. George joins Ford with prior experience at two major philanthropies. As manager of Training and Practice at Hillspire LLC, he provided grantmaking expertise, technical support, research, and knowledge management services across the Schmidt Family philanthropic entities. This work included supporting Hillspire in strategic grantmaking, legal compliance, forming new grantmaking entities, and applying DEI approaches in grantmaking.

Before Hillspire, George spent more than six years at Open Society Foundations in New York, where he served as a program specialist and learning officer. He designed and led training for OSF staff on effective gran making policy and practice. Before entering the philanthropic sector, George’ had tenures at Legal Outreach, Inc. in Queens and at the New York City Department of Education. He began his career as a public school teacher in Brooklyn. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Howard University School of Law.