Officers and Trustees

Joel L. Fleishman (Chairman)
Professor of Law & Public Policy, and Director of the Samuel & Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy and Professions, Duke University

Video Interview: Joel Fleishman on the Role of Foundations

Mr. Fleishman is a professor, lawyer, and leading expert on American philanthropy. He has served as president of The Atlantic Philanthropic Service Company (the U.S. program staff for Atlantic Philanthropies) and was the founding director of what is now the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Freeman Hrabowski, III (Vice Chairman)
President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Dr. Hrabowski is an expert on science and math performance, specializing in minority participation and performance in these fields. He currently advises the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and schools and universities nationwide. In 2012, he was named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World."

J. Adam Abram
President and CEO of James River Group, Inc., Chairman of Franklin Holdings Ltd., and Chairman of Piedmont Community Banking Holdings, Inc.

Mr. Abram has founded and directed four companies in financial services and real estate: Adaron Group, Inc., Front Royal, Inc., James River Group, Inc., and, most recently, Piedmont Community Bank Holdings, Inc., a federally chartered bank holding company with plans to create a community bank to serve southern Virginia, North Carolina, and parts of South Carolina.

David Autor
Professor of Economics and associate chair of the Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mr. Autor is professor of economics and associate chair of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Economics. His fields of specialization include human capital, skill supply and demand, and earnings inequality; labor market impacts of technological change and globalization; disability insurance and labor force participation; and contingent and intermediated work arrangements. Autor is the co-director of the MIT School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative and, since 2009, the editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Donald A. Baer
Worldwide Chairman and CEO of the strategic communications firm Burson-Marsteller and Chairman of the research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland

Mr. Baer has been a leader and executive in media and communications for a wide range of important business, government and non-profit organizations. He has had extensive strategic, operational and creative experience at the White House, global companies and major media organizations. From 1998 to 2007, he was Discovery Communications senior vice president for strategy and development. He was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, including stints as his director of strategic planning and communications and as chief speechwriter/director of speechwriting and research. A former media lawyer, reporter, and magazine editor, Baer has won two Writers Guild of America awards for his work on the annual Kennedy Center Honors TV production. He also led the creation of Silverdocs, the American Film Institute and Discovery Communications' annual documentary festival.

Afsaneh M. Beschloss
President and CEO of the Rock Creek Group

Ms. Beschloss is an economist with expertise in the areas of finance, investments and energy. She was Managing Director at the Carlyle Group after serving in several capacities at the World Bank, including as Treasurer and Chief Investment Officer. She has worked at J.P. Morgan and Shell International Group and taught international trade at Oxford University, from which she holds an MPhil (Honors) in Economics, and is a trustee of the Ford Foundation.

Erskine B. Bowles
President Emeritus of the University of North Carolina

Mr. Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina from 2006 to 2010, co-chaired President Barack Obama's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. A former member of the National Economic Council and National Security Council, he served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, and director of the Small Business Administration. The founder and former chairman and CEO of the Charlotte investment banking firm that became Bowles Hollowell Connor & Co., Bowles was previously a general partner of Forstmann Little, a New York private equity firm.

Henry Cisneros
Founder and Executive Chairman of CityView

Mr. Cisneros is Founder and Executive Chairman of CityView, one of the nation's premier institutional investment firms focused on urban real estate, in-city housing, and metropolitan infrastructure. He served as President and COO for the Spanish-language network Univision from 1997 to 2000 and as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 to 1997 under President Clinton. Prior to his cabinet position, Mr. Cisneros was the four-term Mayor of San Antonio, Texas from 1981 to 1989.

Jamie S. Gorelick
Partner, WilmerHale

Ms. Gorelick is a lawyer with high-level government experience. A former member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, she has also been deputy attorney general of the United states and general counsel of the Department of Defense.

Fernando Guerra
Retired Director of Health, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District

Dr. Guerra is a pediatrician, civic leader, and professor of Pediatrics. A public official, he also teaches at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base, and the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas.

Marne L. Levine
Vice President for Global Public Policy, Facebook

Ms. Levine has extensive experience in government, communications and technology issues. She served as Chief of Staff of the National Economic Council during the Obama Administration and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for banking and finance at the Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration. She has been the director of product management for Revolution Money, a payment network, and also served as Chief of Staff to Larry Summers when he was President of Harvard University.

N. Gregory Mankiw
Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Mr. Mankiw, a Harvard University professor of economics since 1987, has extensively researched price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. A prolific writer, he has also written two popular textbooks: Macroeconomics and Principles of Economics, which has sold over two million copies and been translated into over 20 languages. He has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adviser to the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York and the Congressional Budget Office. From 2003 to 2005, he served as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

Annette L. Nazareth
Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP

Ms. Nazareth is a lawyer and a former policymaker. She served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and as the Director of the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets. She has also held senior legal positions in the investment banking industry.

Joshua B. Rales
Founder and Managing Partner, RFI Associates

Mr. Rales is a lawyer, investor, and philanthropist. Through his RFI Foundation, Mr. Rales supports organizations committed to educational equity, cancer research, health care for the uninsured, and other social services for the underprivileged.

Jeremy Travis
President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York

Mr. Travis is a national expert on criminal justice, a lawyer, an educator, and a public servant. He has launched a national research program on prisoner reentry at the Urban Institute, directed the National Institute of Justice, held high-level positions in the New York City Policy Department and the Mayor's office, clerked for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and worked for the Vera Institute of Justice.

Anthony A. Williams
Chief Executive Officer, Federal City Council

Mr. Williams' career spans public service, real estate development, and teaching. He has been mayor of the District of Columbia; CFO for the District; CEO of Ramsey Group, Inc.; and an executive in many federal, state, and municipal agencies. He also teaches at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Judy Woodruff
Co-Anchor and Senior Correspondent, The PBS NewsHour

Ms. Woodruff is a nationally known broadcast journalist.  She has been CNN's prime anchor and senior correspondent, chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, anchor of Frontline, and NBC's White House correspondent.