News About Former Ford Foundation Staff

Christine J. Vincent, a former Foundation program officer and deputy director for Media, Arts and Culture from 1992 to 2001, is quoted in the January issue of ARTnews in a feature article titled “The Artist as Philanthropist” discussing the rise of private foundations created by visual artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Joan Mitchell and Robert Rauschenberg.

Vincent is Study Director of the Aspen Institute’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations, a project of the institute’s Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation, which recently released a ground-breaking comprehensive report surveying this new field and discussing best practices. The study identified 300 artist-endowed foundations with $2.5 billion in assets that conduct grantmaking and operate exhibition programs, study centers and artist residency centers. The study, which also explores the work of prominent national arts funders, including The Ford Foundation, can be read at www.aspeninstitute.org/psi/a-ef-report.

An op-ed piece that Vincent wrote for The Chronicle of Philanthropy about the growing influence of artist-endowed foundations, and drawing on the Aspen study, is reprinted here: Artist-endowed Foundations: A Growing Force in Philanthropy.

The Foundation building found itself in the news again earlier this year when Kevin Roche, its architect, took time out from ceremonies marking a show at the Museum of the City of New York devoted to his work and visited the site. He and Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic of The New York Times when the building was constructed and one of its admirers, were featured in a Times article that extolled the structure as “among the most renowned and recognizable of the city’s modern landmarks….” Mr. Roche and Ms. Huxtable were given a tour of the building by the Foundation president, Luis Ubinas. The article noted that the building “has been well kept….The foundation proved to be a faithful steward.” 

Steven Solnick has been named president of Warren Wilson College and is scheduled to assume his role in July. Warren Wilson is a unique four-year liberal arts college in Ashville, N. C., that has been cited by several national publications for its “triad” program, in which all students, in addition to their academic studies, must have an on-campus job and complete 100 hours of community service during their four years. Newsweek magazine ranked the service program as third best in the country, the Fiske guide listed the college among the 25 “best buys” in the country, its master of fine arts program was ranked number one by Poets & Writers magazine and the Sierra magazine ranked the school number four on its list of “coolest schools”. 

Solnick was teaching political science at Columbia University with an emphasis on Russian politics when he was named the Foundation’s Moscow representative in 2001. He has been its representative in New Delhi since 2008. 

Suzanne Siskel is the new executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Asia Foundation where she will oversee the foundation’s daily operations and work closely with its president, David Arnold, on strategy and policy issues. She had worked at Ford for the past twenty years in a variety of positions in New York and abroad, primarily in Southeast Asia. She was the Foundation’s representative in Indonesia and the Philippines from 1990 to 2005. Moving to the New York headquarters, she became the Director of Social Justice Philanthropy, acting director of the newly formed Gender Rights and Equality unit and Director of Community and Resource Development. She studied anthropology, earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. 

Sara Rios is scheduled to become the new president of the Ruth Mott Foundation in April. Rios has been a program officer and director of Ford’s Human Rights, Equality and Justice Unit and before that was legal director of the Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund. She has a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Toledo College of Law. Ruth Mott is a family foundation in Flint, Mich., with a mission to “advocate, stimulate and support community vitality” through programs in the arts, beautification and health promotion.

Titi Liu has joined the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at the Stanford Law School of Stanford University as the first director of International Public Interest Initiatives. Her role will be to “spearhead new research and programs to leverage the resources of the law school to support practicing public interest attorneys in transitional societies, coordinate across centers and other schools at Stanford around international initiatives and joint projects”, and advise students and alumni seeking careers in international public interest fields. 

Liu had worked as the law and rights program officer in the Foundation’s Beijing office, where she helped develop international organizations, multilateral and bilateral agencies, and non-governmental organizations working in human rights and the rule of law. 

Cyrus E. Driver, who had worked at Ford since 1998, has been named vice president for strategy and planning at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. Driver began at Ford as an education program officer, became deputy director of the educational opportunity and scholarship program and, in 2010, became director of program learning and innovation.

Barbara Klugman, a program officer and then senior program officer for sexuality and reproductive health and rights at Ford from March 2003 to September 2009, has been named to the board of directors of Urgent Action Fund – Africa. The fund, with offices in Nairobi, Kenya, is a human rights and feminist organization that “invests in the transformation of the world in which women live, enabling them to have full and equal enjoyment of their human rights.” It is a regional division of the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, whose main office is in San Francisco.

Klugman lives in Johannesburg, Sotuh Africa, and is an associate professor at the University of Witwatersrand School of Public Health. She continues to work for several international agencies on issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). During the last two years she coordinated two research and national consultation processes, the first of which resulted in the development of an SRHR policy framework for the South African Department of Health. The second led to the establishment of a new non-governmental organization in South Africa designed to increase the number of public opinion leaders, decision makers and service providers who promote sexual and reproductive health and rights as specified in the South African constitution.