to name a few the two men that will that will be featured in today's presidential speaker series event are exemplary of outstanding leadership in their own rights. first darren walker who i just had the pleasure of meeting right there president of the ford foundation who like me is a proud product of the american public education system. during his time at the ford foundation and international social justice philanthropy president walker led the ford foundation to become the first nonprofit in the us history to issue 1 billion dollars designated in social bond to us capitol markets to strengthen and stabilize nonprofit organizations as a response to the covid-19 pandemic. president walker has served on the independent commission on new york city criminal justice and incarceration reform as well as the un international labor organization global commission on the future of work. that is a lot of words. i'm sorry. he co-founded both the us impact investing alliance and the president's council on disability inclusion in philanthropy and as a founding member of the board diversity action alliance, he serves on many other boards including the lincoln center for performing arts the national gallery of art carnegie hall the high line the committee to protect journalists and the smithsonian national museum of african american history and culture my personal favorite museum in the country, by the way in addition to his phenomenal philanthropic work. he's also the recipient of 16 honorary degrees and university awards including harvard university's w e b dubois medal. finally are others featured speaker. today is a man that has shown perseverance and audaciousness while leading the tulane community through covid-19 outbreaks and category for hurricanes. through thick and thin his care for tulane students and our community is evident through his actions whether it is personally checking on students who were forced to spend the holiday season and quarantine due to covid exposure socially distance, of course helping that student evacuation process during hurricane ida, or even just a simple conversation while running into him at the commons. i'm honored to have him as a fearless leader of our community and a personal mentor of my own. please welcome to the stage elaine's very own president fitz. please also welcome to the sage president walker of the ford foundation. so, um first i want to welcome everybody in the audience. it's a pleasure to be here. what an incredible event. this was i could speak for 30 minutes about how excited i am about bookfest, but we have more important things to do at this point and it really is a privilege and honor to be able to really do a deep dive into one of the true leaders of not only foundations but the nonprofit community and sort of get his views about where we're going. i do want to exercise a brief personal privilege as a proud president. akira shelton is a student of mine who is the in the new compuling honors program and it's just extraordinary not only the student but as a as a leader and i fully expect 20 years from now the then president of tulane university will be interviewing her. so look this this is an incredible moment for us to sort of talk about your vision of philanthropy. you're obviously an incredible leader. not only of one of the most important nonprofit institutions in the world, but a visionary about where the nonprofit world should be heading and as to that have come you've written this this really incredible book, which we're going to talk about from generosity to justice a new gospel of wealth, which is a play on andrew carnegie's book gospel of wealth sort of turns it on its head and obviously we want to discuss that but before we get to that i want to talk a little bit about you and your your past and your history you grew up in lafayette, louisiana as oh, yes, let's hear it for for lafayette. think it's safe to say you you didn't grow up in a world of privilege. you're one of the first classes. maybe the first class is in head start. you've crossed incredible racial social economic barriers of product of public education, and now you're really on to the the pinnacle of nonprofit leadership. can you just tell us a little bit? about that journey how you make how you got from lafayette to where you are today? and well, thank you very much. president fitz. it's such. thrill for me to be in new orleans this is a magical city. and as someone who to travel. i'm very privileged in my role because the foundation has offices and 10 different regions around the world. so lucky to travel a lot. and it's really interesting. internationally the number of american cities that actually have what i would call brand identity. and there's detroit, of course. new orleans also has a global brand identity. i know that because when we were working with my good friend walter isaacs and ann and king milling and so many others. challenge post katrina when i traveled abroad so many people were very aware of what had happened. and we're really watching. and so it's it's always a thrill and when cheryl and walter approached me about this three years ago. i dump that the chance to come because who doesn't jump at the chance to come to new orleans and i will say i am i decided to stay with friends, who are new yorkers who bought a house here. and this morning over lunch. i mean they are. the quintessential new yorkers. i mean, this is it's you know a sort of gay couple who are incredibly successful and who have five houses and they love and they said the great silver lining of covid is that we've fallen in love with new orleans? as we've been here. and we don't want to leave. and it was so interesting to hear one of them say, you know, i'm really lamenting having to leave and go back to new york, which to me is a new yorker. i was wounded i have to say i was wounded because i am one of these new yorkers who feel that. we've got to love new york, but it was interesting to experience someone who came to new orleans and have just fallen in love with the city and want to leave and i understand why. so the journey for me actually i was born in lafayette, louisiana. i was and i my family my mother's family my well. i didn't really know my father, but i know that he was from opelousas or someplace like that. i know it was close because my family is in lafayette and opelousas and rain and crowley and all of east town dotting old interstate i guess it was highway 90 we used to take when i was a kid from beaumont outside of beaumont and liberty county where i lived so i did actually go to texas as a little boy. my mother moved us to liberty texas, which is between beaumont and houston and we lived not in liberty. the irony is that liberty was the name of the town and the county seat. but blacks couldn't live in liberty and so the next town, which was ames population 1,200 is where we lived and we lived on the dirt road and a little shotgun house and one day in 1965 and the spring of 1965 a lady was walking. down the road going from little house to little house and she approached our porch or my mother and i was sitting and she told my mother about a new program that president johnson had initiated called head start. and that they were going to have the first class of head start in the summer. that summer and so i was lucky enough to be enrolled in the first class of headstart and my friend marion wright edelman always loves telling that story because she's constantly pulling me to come and advocate in washington for head start, which i'm happy to do, but it truly did begin me on the journey. ended it i think in many ways initiated my love of reading and my interest in the world outside of the world that i lived in. and it absolutely began a journey of public education. which is for me really critical and i in a democracy and i say that and it is on my official bio. and i make sure that whenever i do panels or from davos to aspen or whatever. to have that included in my bio because i'm usually the only person who can say, i've never had a day of private education my entire education represents. the public's investment in belief in me and i think in i think in a in a democracy that statement by leaders. in this country is rarer and rarer and i think that is a problem. i think it's a problem when you're in places. like davos and aspen on panels and no one has gone to public anything. and so for me, i'm really proud and it's partly why i'm an advocate for public institutions. and the journey to forward in so many ways was made possible by ford because the ford foundation indeed. funded the early experiments on what became head start in the new haven a town. you are familiar with and the new haven schools and i of course went to college on a pale grant that too was something the ford foundation invested early research in and i was lucky enough to run up community development corporation in harlem, which again was something the ford foundation was very involved in so it felt like for me when i was lucky enough to join forward that in some ways. i was coming home. um, so i guess i was going to ask you in a sense how that history. informed your your service at ford, but you've literally explained that you know, you bring to the foundation a series of experiences. and backgrounds that few other of your parentheses have and i obviously that's that's shown, you sort of a new direction what i start about. your book which obviously you wrote it while you had a day job running the ford foundation and obviously you brought to the foundation sort of a new view about what what it should be supporting. but let what led you to write the book first of all, why why did you feel the need to sort of step back and sort of talk about a new vision for philanthropy and for? well, i was introduced to philanthropy through the lens of working at the rockefeller foundation. and at rockefeller john d. rockefeller was very inspired. of course by his own religious beliefs and giving and charity. but also andrew carnegie's book. seminal 1898 book and the essay in it. that was the gospel of wealth in which he laid out. what became really the foundations of what we think of us institutional philanthropy in this country and the way donors give and in it. he talked about the imperative of charity of of generosity of things like literacy when i was when i became president, i was truly searching for a framework because i i need frameworks in my life. i don't know about you, but i need frameworks because the world is so complicated to think about. a set of values that actually you can consistently apply it's hard. and and i read a really obscure speech that martin luther king had given in which he talked about philanthropy in 1968. and what he said was philanthropy is commendable, but it should not allow the philanthropist to to overlook te economic injustice, which makes philanthropy necessary. and so what dr. king was saying was something different he was saying yes charity and generosity should. should inspire you to give. but the pursuit of justice and dignity. should also inspire you and that. charity is not enough. that actually human dignity and justice should also be a part of one's thinking about the role of what? giving should help address and so it is not just ameliorative. but really look that the root causes. and so it made it. that allowed me to think about a different framework. that was differentiating in part because at the time i was in the midst of with my trustees really reimagining the foundation. everything from our our mission to our grant making our programs where we worked in the world what we worked on our headquarter building in new york our art collection that had no women or people of color in it all sorts of things that i really wanted the board to think about. and it gave me a frame and so it allowed me to say how do we move? yes, let's celebrate and we should feel good when we give and donors should feel good about giving. but what dr. king was saying was? it's not enough to feel good. that you've written a check and and you are thinking you need to actually get a little uncomfortable. and he was saying what congressman lewis reminded us that it certainly in in our religious teachings in our own faith traditions this idea of of addressing these issues ought to make us uncomfortable. and and what i write about in the book is just how how difficult that is. in a society and with the population of people like most of us in this room. who are privileged? the whole idea of privilege to insulate ourselves from feeling uncomfortable you know the number of times my mother said who works so hard never saved a dollar, but she always said i worked so hard so that you can have something better a better life in some privilege that i didn't have. and every parent says that and wants that for their child. but in a society where there's growing inequality. and where people like me. have benefited inordinately. disproportionately as inequality has grown in our society, which is so harmful to our democracy. this question of how we think about justice? dignity and our own privilege i wanted to make that a part of the discourse about giving. so what? what is so remarkable about the book is yes, it's it's a story about how. incredible foundation like the ford foundation should be thinking about how to expend its resources, but it's also directed to philanthropists across the country and individuals across the country about how they should think about what they're doing. in in their own philanthropy, but us. can i just on this president could say that is right. part of this was not to be dogmatic or ideological or to say i'm telling you telling you what you should think about, right? it was more to extend what? rockefeller in carnegie talked about because they brought this notion of root causes. of the work john d rockefellers work on scientific research was really getting at the root causes of of health of literacy and and for his era for their error, they certainly carnegie and absolutely rockefeller in his own way. the foundations were radical i mean john d. rockefeller actually thought 1892 black women should go to college. that was a radical idea of a wealthy white man or anybody in this country. remember this was a country. that where literally there were states. where illiteracy was compulsory by law. of african-americans it was illegal. have african-americans be literate. and so for john d rockefeller to say actually i'm going to give. $100,000 to this -- women's baptist, whatever the predecessor name of spelman college was because i believe black women should get. before your degree now he wasn't just to be clear. didn't say and they should go to smith with my daughters. no, just to be clear. he just i mean it was that was radical for the context and it's why context is important and context does matter. what i was trying to do was to extend that with the book to say actually. black women should have a choice. if they want to go to smith like your daughters they should. and and i think what i was trying to do with the book was to expose some of the really difficult. truth about root causes that rockefeller or carnegie didn't address and and couldn't really address. because of the times in which they lived i'm not excusing it. i'm simply saying. context does matter and so they weren't looking at issues of racism. which was a root cause so you can't. andrew carnegie built libraries across america which was again a radical idea because in europe. what existed were libraries for the rich that were built? privately for the rich this notion that every town and hamlet should have a carnegie library. was a radical idea. but andrew carnegie was okay. with the fact that there were -- libraries that were second. tear second quality with the discarded books from the main carnegie libraries and what i wanted to do was to actually engage in that issue as a root cause i mean the issue of can't talk about literacy in the american south. and and the history of literacy as carnegie was engaging in. and not deal with the fact that it was illegal for blacks to be literate in some jurisdictions in the south. and that was because of racism. and white supremacy which is really hard to talk about. it is uncomfortable. it is shameful and it's something that is so antithetical to our ideals as a country and the things we aspire jefferson said the work of america is to build a great nation. that is just that's what jefferson said to his friend samuel dupont. so i want to hold jefferson to his words. and i believe those words that jefferson wrote to his friends samuel dupont and i think in philanthropy we need to take up the mantle and ask questions not just about generosity but about justice. it reminds me the famous langston hughes poem for the dream to be saved for one. it must be saved for all and it's a it's a statement of generosity, but trying to bring people. into the shared vision so you you know, i don't know how many people here have read the book, but it's it's a marvelous series of invests and interviews with people across the country who've been involved in philanthropy and running organizations or in one way or another and how they came to understand their obligations. morally to social justice. i know you love all your children, but are there any of those cases that? jump out at you is sort of illustrating your point more generally. i think the cases that i wrote are all people. i know and what i i think among the things that are interesting are the contrasts. to the contrast between david rockefeller jr. who? is the epitome of inherited wealth? generation and john arnold who? was a trader made some great trades and a bit and it's a billionaire at age 38. sort of the notion of the self-made and the notion of the inherited and what i find is that the self-made are more impatient. probably more imperious. and more confident and someone like david. is grappling with inheriting and that inheritance is a different burden. and is a different challenge. and i'm because i do. engaged with newer donors new or philanthropy and inherited wealth. it's just a really interesting. perspective and contrast of styles and personalities and approaches to giving speak very forcefully in the book about the importance of both philanthropists and institutions engaging with the individuals for there in a sense intending to support and involving them directly in the decision making in the process. you i mean i have to ask you know what you know, what what in what led you to that view that as so important? how do you do that at the ford foundation? well, i think when you talk about, you know lived experience. often there is such a gap between donors people like many of you in this room who are generous and want to make a difference in your community and in the world and the lived experience of the people you're trying to help. their experience your experience your children's experience versus their children. lived experience and this idea of proximity which brian stevenson who's on my board and we're so lucky to have brian head forward as a trustee and brian is talks about this all the time getting proximate to the places and people and communities. you want to affect? and the lived experience for me of of being feeling such a chasm between communities like mine or my own lived experience i often think i'm sometimes and i do this in the book where i talked about. my own experience and how that affected me and what i brought when i was 13. i had my first job and i was a busboy in a restaurant. and the thing about being a busboy when you're 13. in 1972 in the small town in texas is you're invisible. i mean you're you're you're the lowest person with the dishwasher on the organizational chart. and so your job is to clean the bathrooms and bus tables. and your existence is really? one of invisibility. i mean you you you are in a place and your job is to as discrete and as invisible as possible. and often people treat you that way. and i think i do think about so many people in our country feel invisible that that the way i walked around the room and bus tables and would take things from people who were clearly privileged and have it obviously. more economic at least economic power i was invisible to a lot of those people. and i think about that and being proximate to people who who feel invisible. and i i see it in our politics. it's partly why i think the level of growing inequality in our society has only exacerbated. sense of people feeling that their needs their priorities are ignored. and that they are disfavored. and i i can i can relate to that. and i think being able to relate to that. makes me at least emotionally more proximate. i know what it feels like. to come home and have a notice of eviction on the front door. i know what it feels like to. be waiting for your mother to pick you up from debate. and she doesn't come because her car has been repossessed. and so if you have that lived experience, it allows you when you are engaging on these issues to bring that with you. and and so the way we get proximate really depends. lived experience i still think i need to be approximate. but it's really hard for me to be proximate. because the way our society is structured in the way. we live our lives. is very much a function? of income economics of geography of our own aspirations and so you have to at least in my case. i have to work. to do that because the sort of conveyor belt of my daily routine would only have me in places like aspen and davos. i love aspen walter, but but yes, you know that that's why being proximate is important at ford with the way we we do that is we say, let's look at how do participatory grant making grant making in which we don't just allow the credentialed. program officers to review grant applications let's give 15 million dollars to black feminist farm and let black community-based grassroots feminist organizations decide how they're going to disperse the money. and that's monitor. let's evaluate that. let's put five years on that. and that's from the beginning say to that the group. we're giving this money unrestricted. you all set up the guidelines for how you want to disperse it. we are going to hold you accountable. for evaluation just like we do. our grants but you decide and and let's see five years. what kind of impact you have? so i think those kinds of experiments are really important. so you also i'm speaking eloquently and passionately about the importance of diversity. in not only in organizations, but in decision making um, how have you seen evidence of the positive impacts of diversity? and how do you ensure that? part of the ford foundation and its grant well, i think it's really. unfortunate that diversity. has in the eyes of some taken on the moniker of if we are pursuing diversity. we are. lowering our standards we are lessening the chance we will achieve excellence. and i really i mean, i really regret. that the way it was really introduced was in that supreme court case of alan bakke around quotas, which the supreme court deemed unconstitutional but that diversity as a state and public objective was constitutional and i think because diversity was introduced that way. in the eyes of some still means that when what we really know is that diverse organizations outperform less diverse organizations and there's great research in harvard business review has and mckenzie have done really excellent. inventories of the different research agendas on that specific issue because it is so contested. i do believe in a democracy. a representative democracy a plural multiracial democracy that representation matters. and it matters not only because of having faces that look like the country. indecision making it matters because the organizations are better. i will. i have been on many boards public company boards and other nonprofits where i am the only person of color i'm the only black person or maybe the only gay person. but i can say with some degree of certainty that my presence had an impact. on the deliberations of those and i can also say that when we moved. from what? people might have thought was diversity, which is really tokenism. many of those boards i was the only african-american than on i remember. a public company bought i was on and when the draft of the proxy was was circulated to the directors and the part about the board. they described the borders diverse and know i'm the only black on the board and i said to the ceo. i mean i actually don't think we need to be clear. one is tokenism. that make sure we don't conflate tokenism and diversity. and for many of our institutions the idea of having one what's the objective? i mean to say we we've got one. was enough and i actually have fought hard against that and i know the difference. i know when i look at. many of the boards and mom, but if i were to look at really the public company boards there's a difference. i was the only black director on the pepsico board. and when all of the horrific things that happened from the murder of george floyd in that summer and what was happening in the company. the fact that i was there, i am sure. well, i know. had a material impact on the deliberations of the board. when we we were joined soon after with the second black director in edith cooper. who was the first black woman partner at goldman sachs? edith and my presence on the board and it wasn't just about diversity issues and esg there are a lot of other issues. that our input into those deliberations has made for a better company i think i can say that. at pepsico or the national gallery of art which until i was elected had never in its history had an african-american. trustee until 2019 the national gallery funded by the american citizens yeah, i it's it's shocking isn't it but no one seemed to accept that god sharon rockefeller at the thought it was a problem and but who wouldn't she be and when sharon became? and she became chair then she had the authority to say we've got to change. you know. but my point is that was me today. you would never that mean no credible board of a public company or of any institution can exist like that? i mean you just you don't have any credibility. if you look around the room, and there's not any diversity someone will raise their hand and say excuse me. has anyone thought about which you which? i can assure you because i would be the person raising my hand. and sometimes i would just simply be told. oh darren, why do you have to bring up that again like you ever do every nominating in governance meeting. or when you're told we agree with you now you go fix it. because we don't know any black people to put on the board. that was what one tear of anomaly dove committee told me a few years ago. so i my world. i'm going to open it up for questions from the audience, but i started out by saying that you'd really written an extraordinary book about philanthropy and generosity and social justice, but it really is it's a story about our society and and the obligations of people in the society, and i'm so delighted that we we got to talk about all these issues now walker isaacson is sitting in front of me. he's gonna fire me in a second because i'm already gone over i've gone over in terms of our time. up, but i do want to open it up for questions from the audience about karen. i where we're yes. what do we have a microphone or yes? there we always i think we have my behind you with somebody within my okay, okay. you mentioned that empathy stems from proximity. right, but we also know that liberal and moderate voters that move into conservative enclaves will change their voting habits and grow more conservative over time and actually vote with conservative majorities and whatnot. so my question for you is as you were talking about how that that early experience galvanized you. how do you maintain empathy for others based up in that proximity when you are gaining greater and greater access to and our surrounded by the trackings of privilege and wealth and access and whatnot. that's my question. no great question about proximity and and empathy in these matters. i think part of it is you're right about the research. but for me, you know, this takes me back to talking about the arts which i will do just for two minutes because so much of why we the arts matter in our society is because of the empathy because of the ways in which they teach us. it's why you want your children to go to museums and be in our education programs because we know from the research that it makes young people more empathetic. and you can always i reflected on this. whenever i have seen a leader. who speaks of other human beings in inhumane ways and uses language? that degrades the humanity of other people. i always know that that leader has never red beautiful poetry they've never looked at a painting and been emotionally touched. they've never experienced great literature because if they had they wouldn't be using that kind of language because they'd have empathy and they'd have an understanding that every person has humanity. so just a plug for the arts. yes, ma'am. i i feel the hordes are upon us. but so one more time. yeah. hi county jackson. my family is sort of completed the reverse great migration. my uncle's left here after the great flood of 27. great uncles my mom returned after katrina when they needed doctors and my sister and i returned since the pandemic but to see that half of black people in this city are either unemployed. or retired with very little opportunity still very little opportunity and we have all these wonderful schools where people come and then they leave. how do we and this is not i mean new orleans is a special but i mean, it's chicago. it's so many other cities. and just we really have to we talk about generosity talk talk about justice, but until the racism is the economic benefit of letting go of racism seems to meet with the moral imperative of justice. i don't know what we do. i mean you've been doing some amazing things, but it just feels as if we're still stuck and the divide is growing and there's so many people here who are just lost mostly people of color and i think the issue of economics and capitalism. it's why i've written so much about as a strong believer in capitalism, i do believe it's the best way to organize an economic system. i also know that our system is also imbued with that history of racism. and the difficulty for many people to talk about that. because for those of us who are privileged? this system has worked for us. i mean, i know what it feels like to live with privilege and without and there's a big difference. and i know what it feels like. to go into a bank and walk into the private bank and pack bypass the lines. and that's a metaphor. and we who are the designers of this system? need to be need to come to grips with ultimate failure of our democracy if we aren't willing to do some redesigning. and that really is about policy to you can't have an economic system a democracy where city says we want to pay our workers in low wage jobs higher incomes higher compensation and the city council passed a policy that does that and then the business community go to the state capitol and have the state legislature reverse it. right. i mean, i mean then there really does have to be a conversation about economics. and the design of the system so that people like me have to understand that. if this system if this country if our democracy is going to survive. the trend lines around inequality and who is benefiting? don't give us much hope for that and that's the important point in our democracy in this democracy. hope is the oxygen of our democracy. and hopelessness is our enemy. inequality spiciates hope it makes people. feel less confident and actually makes people cynical. and unwilling to actually engage in the public square because they don't believe that the systems of government the systems of the economy. care about them and when that happens it's really bad news. there i'm afraid we could go on for hours and this has been an extraordinary conversation. i think we all would agree that your perspective is a visible demonstration about the importance of bringing people who have insights from their life to the pinnacles of power and and it's clearly that your history is informed every aspect of your tutelage of the ford foundation, but more importantly this is turned into a discussion about our society and what we need to do for our society, i encourage everybody to read this book because it's a marvelous demonstration of a sense of hope but a sense of need for this country, so i want to thank darren. thank you.