HEATHER LORD

Former Co-Chair

Heather Lord is a philanthropy and social enterprise thought leader and practitioner. She has been in the philanthropic sector for almost two decades at a Rockefeller Foundation new media startup, the Whitney family’s Greentree Foundation for diplomacy and social justice, and she was also in the private sector as a futurist trendspotter and consumer behavior analyst for Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve. She is currently consulting to individuals and foundations on their social impact strategies; researching shifting trends and comparative historical traditions of philanthropy in US and other countries (esp. China, Middle East, Africa, EU); and launching a new international initiative on human resilience and social enterprise in urban conflict zones.

The broader issues driving her work center around historically and culturally comparative designs for social investment; the impact of globalization on philanthropic theory and practice; and the diverse institutions and traditions that humans have invented to generate social change and invest in the common good. She serves on various boards for philanthropy, arts and international human rights organizations such as Humanity In Action, the RNR Foundation, and the Global Philanthropy Committee of the Council on Foundations. She was educated at the University of Chicago, Reed College, and she completed a Master of Public Policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs