Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice | 320 E 43rd Street, New York
On view June 5 – August 10, 2024
Opening Event June 5, 2024 | 5-7PM
Gallery Hours: Monday-Saturday | 11AM-6PM

New York, NY – The Ford Foundation Gallery is pleased to present Cantando Bajito: Incantations, the second movement of a year-long exhibition series that celebrates strategies for resistance in the wake of rising violence and incursions against bodily autonomy toward feminized bodies. Building on Testimonies, the first exhibition in this three-part arc—which centered forms of testimony used to resist violence faced by feminized bodies—the second chapter, Incantations, brings together artists who consider ancestral, contemporary, and future-facing networks of support and care that safeguard feminized bodies through forms of knowledge transmission. 

Such networks—symbolic systems, subversive spaces, or covert forms of language—are as varied as the communities that develop them. They include Nüshu, a form of script passed from mother to daughter in China; the use of henna as an agent of protection; and forms of therapeutic communication that have been deemed “gossip.” All have long existed, whether in the shadows or in plain sight. Preserved not in written history but in the body, these channels prepare feminized bodies for potential violence while giving them tools to resist it. This exhibition, curated by Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, and Beya Othmani, celebrates these protective channels through artworks by Amina Agueznay, Seba Calfuqueo, IV Chan, Tamar Ettun, Serene Hui, siren eun young jung, Mônica Ventura, and Osías Yanov, which engage with or conjure such feminized spaces for transmitting support. 

Incantations is a tribute to the practice of re-existence, a concept coined by feminist activists of the Global South who resist profound acts of violence in their everyday lives. As shown powerfully by the activist contributors to the book Feminicide and Global Accumulation, which explores frontline struggles against patriarchal and capitalist violences in the Global South, re-existence turns spaces of violence into places for building new solidarities, moving beyond resistance to imagine other possible ways of existing. 

Considering the forms such transformative possibilities may take, the “incantations” of the title reflect the subversive potential of the occult in fostering re-existence. Defined as the casting of spells through magical words, incantations have been associated with figures whose transgressive social positioning and non-conformity to gender roles have led them to be viewed as menacing. This exhibition considers how such figures and their voices, channeling protective meaning, can embody a practice of generative resistance across generations, brought forth powerfully among these artists’ works. 

The artists featured in Incantations address the many strategies used by feminized bodies to conceal and encode knowledge of resistance and survival. For example, in Amina Agueznay’s fiber-based piece Enfouissements (Acts of Burying) (2024), fragments of jewelry encoded with symbolic verses are buried within the fibers of a woven rug, itself a reinterpretation of a traditional Moroccan wedding veil with symbolic details that afford the bride protection. Carrying this coded language forward within it, the work evokes both the erasures of gender-based violence as well as forms of covert resistance. Similarly, in Serene Hui’s printmaking work Gossip and the video Scold (both 2022), passages from writers Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Anne Carson are, respectively, encoded through a series of obscuring, protective translations into a secret scroll and used to challenge how feminine voices have been figured as irrational and unpleasant. Both work to reclaim narrative and linguistic control from patriarchal power. Relatedly, Mônica Ventura’s sculptural work O Sorriso de Acotirene (Acotirene’s Smile) (2018) revisits the story of Acotirene, a figure linked to Quilombo dos Palmares, who fought against enslavement in Brazil in the 17th century. The repeating but varied forms of gourds carry the power of fluid movement, connecting symbolically to ancestral feminine creative strength, while evoking the artist’s effort to bring continuity to her position as an artist and a Black woman within spaces often forbidden to racialized bodies. And Seba Calfuqueo’s video work MAPU KUFÜLL (Mariscos de tierra [hongos]) (MAPU KUFÜLL (LAND SEAFOOD [mushrooms])) (2020) reflects the Mapuche people’s traditional practice of foraging mushrooms, an important food for them during Chilean military campaigns into their territories (1861–1883) and today. Through a child using their grandmother’s teachings to gather, respect, and protect the mushrooms, the video reflects the role of mushrooms as a symbol of resistance for the Mapuche people and their relationship with nature.

Myth and folk traditions are revisited within these artworks, to subvert their patriarchal origins into transgressive patterns through which feminized bodies can find tools for resistance and strength. In Tamar Ettun’s sculptural work, Placenta space (2024), the artist revisits and subverts the figure of Lilit, a feminine spirit demon with origins in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Judaic mythology whose image was used in protective rites. Building on the longstanding role the figure has played in the artist’s life, Ettun conjures Lilit out from long-standing misogynistic associations with danger into a fluid, multiform being symbolizing the strength found in complexity, empathy, and vulnerability. And IV Chan‘s installation Ritual rehearsal : the Sacred and the Profane (2020) reinterprets the myth of the rebirth of Nezha, a protection deity in several Chinese traditional religions. In Chan’s piece, Nezha’s symbolic return of his own flesh and bones to his parents sees his body transfigured into lotus roots, pods, and flowers, a form of resistance and refusal releasing the body from family ties into a powerful, gender-fluid being. 

Incantations also looks at forms of collective protection through kinship, chosen ties, and other feminized communities, through the different spaces and forms in which these connections develop. For example, Osías Yanov’s installation Cuarto oscuro, tetera, cuarto oscuro, mi lugar, baño, síntoma del mundo (Dark room, kettle, dark room, my place, bathroom, symptom of the world) (2023) provides a view into an intimate encounter taking place in a nightclub bathroom. This moment shows how, when the right to assemble is denied, the stall becomes its own form of assembly space, drawing the viewer into this arena of concealed intimacy as witness, evoking the role nightlife plays as a site for social activism. siren eun young jung’s video Directing for Gender (2010) is a powerful example of the artist’s ongoing work on Yeoseong Gukgeuk (National Women’s Theater), active in mid-20th century South Korea, where theatrical creation, direction, performance, and production were entirely in the hands of women. This video, a restaging of a lost script with involvement of living Yeoseong Gukgeuk participants, reveals the enduring, subversive potential of collective creation outside of and against patriarchal patterns. And her artwork of digital prints Public yet Private Archive (A Part) (2015, 2024) assembles, with moving intimacy and immediacy, moments from the public and private lives and relationships of the performers. The selection of archival images and newspaper clippings unfolds insights from the artist’s research since 2008 and the space this community created for performance as a form of resistance.

About the Curators

Roxana Fabius is a Uruguayan curator and art administrator based in New York City. Between 2016 and 2022 she was Executive Director at A.I.R. Gallery, the first artist-run feminist cooperative space in the U.S. During her tenure at A.I.R. she organized programs and exhibitions with artists and thinkers such as Gordon Hall, Elizabeth Povinelli, Jack Halberstam, Che Gosset, Regina José Galindo, Lex Brown, Kazuko, Zarina, Mindy Seu, Naama Tzabar, and Howardena Pindell among many others. These exhibitions, programs and special commissions were made in collaboration with international institutions such as the Whitney Museum, Google Arts and Culture, The Feminist Institute, and Frieze Art Fair in New York and London. Fabius has served as an adjunct professor for the Curatorial Practices seminar at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Tel Aviv University. She has also taught at Parsons at The New School, City University of New York, Syracuse University, and Rutgers University. She is currently curating the 2024 exhibition series Cantando Bajito at the Ford Foundation Gallery.

Kobe Ko is an independent curator and artist, and formerly worked as Assistant Curator at Para Site,  Hong Kong (2021–2023) and Art Education and Gallery Coordinator at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019–2021). She has curated Everyday Life in Hong Kong and Fukuoka: The Study of Contemporary Arts and Kougengaku (art space tetra, Fukuoka, 2023), Post-Human Narratives series (Cattle Depot Artist Village and Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, Hong Kong, 2020–2022), Kong Chun Hei’s solo exhibition PS (Para Site, Hong Kong, 2023), Florence Yuk-ki Lee’s solo exhibition Broken heart pieces disco ball (MOU PROJECTS, Hong Kong, 2023), and CHOW KAI CHIN Community Art Experimental Project (Kowloon City, Hong Kong, 2013 & 2014), among others.

Ko’s artworks depart from her intimate relationships and personal sensation and mainly focus on the re-imagination of distance and boundaries. She has participated in joint exhibition The Tailed Scar (Tiger A(r)m Strong Biennale, Hong Kong, 2023), duo exhibition Over the ocean, over the sea (Current Plans, Hong Kong, 2022) and more. She graduated from the Department of Creative Arts and Culture of the Hong Kong University of Education, and received an MA in Gender Studies from Shih Hsin University in Taiwan. She lives and works in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Beya Othmani is an art curator and researcher from Algeria and Tunisia, dividing her time between Tunis and New York. Currently, she is the C-MAP Africa Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Her recent curatorial projects include the Ljubljana 35th Graphic Arts Biennial and Publishing Practices #2 at Archive Berlin. Previously, she took part in the curatorial teams of various projects with sonsbeek20→24 (2020), the Forum Expanded of the Berlinale (2019), and the Dak’Art 13 Biennial (2018), among others, and was a curatorial assistant at the Berlin-based art space, SAVVY Contemporary. Some of her latest curatorial projects explored radical feminist publishing practices, post-colonial histories of print-making, and the construction of racial identities in art in colonial and post-colonial Africa.

About Cantando Bajito’s Series-Wide Curatorial Group

The three-part exhibition series Cantando Bajito is developed by curators Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, with the advice of a larger curatorial group including María Carri, Maria Catarina Duncan, Zasha Colah, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

About The Ford Foundation Gallery

Opened in March 2019 at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York City, the Ford Foundation Gallery spotlights artwork that wrestles with difficult questions, calls out injustice, and points the way toward a fair and just future. The gallery functions as a responsive and adaptive space and one that serves the public in its openness to experimentation, contemplation, and conversation. Located near the United Nations, it draws visitors from around the world, addresses questions that cross borders, and speaks to the universal struggle for human dignity. 

The gallery is accessible to the public through the Ford Foundation building entrance on 43rd Street, east of Second Avenue.

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“Creativity and Civic Space” awards grants to 9 artists with a total budget of $1.25M

NEW YORK – The Ford Foundation announced today its latest grantmaking initiative, “Creativity and Civic Space,” which addresses the importance of protecting and expanding civic space across the globe. With a total commitment of $1.25M, the initiative awards grants, communications, and convening support to 9 artists and organizations from diverse backgrounds, all of whom are working tirelessly in their regions to create open spaces and dialogues about the issues that affect their communities most. 

Artists and organizations were selected for their unwavering dedication to holding public and private actors accountable and their ability to amplify powerful stories about the importance of an inclusive civil society. Each grantee partner is focused on a particular issue that threatens civic space in their part of the world, ranging from impunity for human rights violations to corruption and misinformation, discrimination against people with disabilities, and escalating polarization. 

“Cultural narratives profoundly influence our reality, shaping perceptions, values, and belief systems,” said Lane Harwell, Ford Foundation senior program officer for Creativity and Free Expression. “Through their creative endeavors, these artists are torchbearers of justice; they are forging connections, challenging norms, and inspiring collective action toward a more equitable civil society.”

“At a time when billions of people are excluded from the systems that shape their lives, uplifting narratives about the importance of protecting civic space is more vital than ever,” said Otto Saki, Ford Foundation program officer for Civic Engagement and Government International. “The ‘Creativity and Civic Space’ initiative harnesses the transformative power of art to build a more inclusive world where all voices are heard and valued.”

The selection process for this initiative prioritized traditionally underrepresented voices and artists working across disciplines. The intergenerational cohort is divided between emerging, mid-career, and established artists. They represent six regions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America. 

The grantees include:

Building on the Ford Foundation’s long-standing commitment to the belief that art shapes society’s understanding of the world, Creativity and Civic Space seeks to elevate the voices of artists who are working on the frontlines of social justice movements.

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Published in Chronicle of Philanthropy

By Darren Walker

I have long maintained that hope is the very oxygen of democracy. Yet today, inequality threatens to suffocate that hope.Despite a reckoning with anti-Black racism in 2020, hate crimes in the United States have increased year after year. Despite attempts to overhaul a broken health care system, zip code is still more determinative of health than genetic code. Despite a global pandemic that underscored just how essential so many workers are, labor protections are under attack as income inequality continues to rise. Despite promises from both parties to lower costs and improve daily life, one in six Americans struggles with food insecurity. In a nation where disparities are this stark, it’s no surprise that so many feel that the odds are stacked against them.

Read the full article

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Emerging leaders from around the world join network of leaders tackling global drivers of inequality

NEW YORK – The Ford Foundation announced today the 2024 cohort of the Ford Global Fellowship, a program which aims to connect and support the next generation of leaders from around the world who are advancing innovative solutions to end inequality. The 26 leaders announced today join an existing network of 72 fellows working across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East.

Launched in 2020 with an investment of $50 million over 10 years, the foundation’s flagship fellowship program provides emerging leaders with the tools, networks, and solidarity they need to effectively advance social justice. The Ford Global Fellowship focuses on shared learning across issue areas, building and strengthening connections across borders, and developing a supportive, interconnected cohort from across a wide variety of sectors and regions. It aims to build a powerful network of 240 fellows over the course of the program and serve as a catalyst for the fellows to accelerate the impact of their work, individually and collectively. 

“We are thrilled to welcome these 26 inspiring individuals into the Ford Global Fellowship community,” said Hilary Pennington, executive vice president of programs for the Ford Foundation. “The Ford Global Fellowship is a hallmark of our commitment to invest in the ideas, individuals, and institutions creating lasting, systemic change. The newest Fellows are courageous leaders in their own right who are both imagining and actively building a more just future. Their lived experiences and insights will be a powerful addition to our global community.” 

Central to the Ford Global Fellows initiative is its “community of practice.” Based on principles of co-learning and co-design, the fellows not only learn from each other as peers but also invite the foundation’s grantmakers, grantees, and other networks of leaders from the broader social justice field to learn alongside them. Experiential, place-based learning trips and sessions are organized by fellows from the 11 regions in which Ford operates. The community works to shed light on their interdependent histories and shared challenges in service of creating space for innovation. Each new fellow receives a no-strings-attached $25,000 stipend, alongside individualized coaching, to help grow leadership skills and reach new audiences.

“The community of Ford Global Fellows have expanded each others’ worldviews, challenged their own and our thinking, and posed inquiries that have sharpened our approaches to creating a more just society and fairer systems,” said Adria Goodson, director of the Ford Global Fellowship. “These 26 new Fellows enter a dynamic learning community and will bring their own wisdom and perspectives, contributing to a more complete picture of the work that lies ahead. Together, Fellows will examine their thorniest questions about disrupting inequality and build towards insights, innovations, and actions that will shape a better future.”

The network of Ford Global Fellows represent a broad range of backgrounds, fields, and approaches to addressing inequality, with areas of focus that include promoting equal rights and opportunities for women and girls, securing rights for Indigenous and traditional communities, increasing political and economic power of people with disabilities, and more. Many are from directly impacted communities and emerged as leaders by drawing from their own lived experiences with the challenges of inequality.

The 2024 fellows cohort are:

To learn more about the Ford Global Fellows please visit: https://fordf.org/FordGlobalFellows.

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Published in NPQ

By Bess Rothenberg

Can philanthropy, an institution rooted in the accumulation of wealth, be an effective agent to meaningfully reduce inequality? For decades, while some in philanthropy have supported efforts to change policies and practices to improve people’s lives, philanthropic money has too often reinforced existing power structures, perpetuating inequality in the process.

The numbers illustrate the problem: philanthropy has grown to roughly $1.5 trillion in assets today, up from $330 billion at the turn of the millennium. According to a 1999 Harvard Business Review article, that level represented a 1,100 percent increase over the assets held by foundations only 20 years earlier. Yet during the same period that philanthropy enjoyed extraordinary growth, economic inequality climbed rapidly, negatively impacting the wellbeing of millions. Even in areas where there have been gains toward equality, such as LGBTQ+ rights, progress has been mixed at best.

What is going wrong?

Read the full article

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NEW YORK – The Ford Foundation announced today the election of George H. Walker, chairman and chief executive officer of Neuberger Berman, to its Board of Trustees. 

Walker brings decades of global management and investment experience to the foundation’s board, in addition to a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the workplace and across the financial services industry. Under his leadership, Neuberger Berman has been acknowledged as a leader on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion and has advanced efforts on sustainable and impact investing, industry governance and engagement, and the use and impact of big data and artificial intelligence on the investment industry. 

Walker currently serves as chairman of the Investment Company Institute, which represents over 98% of all registered assets managed in the United States; vice chair of the Partnership for New York City; and on the boards of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Trinity School.

“I have long admired the Ford Foundation’s extraordinary work to empower individuals, institutions, and communities to make our planet more just and improve lives,” said George H. Walker. “I am honored to join them in their fight for others, especially those whose voices are too often silenced and unheard.”

“I’ve known George for over 20 years, and I’m delighted to welcome him to the board. He will bring many assets to the foundation— financial expertise, a commitment to mission investing, and a belief in diversity as a bedrock democratic value,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation.

Prior to Neuberger Berman’s re-emergence as an independent firm in 2009, Walker was global head of the investment management division at its former corporate parent, Lehman Brothers. He previously spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was a partner and a member of the firm’s Partnership Committee. Walker additionally served on the Board of Trustees of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a nonprofit community development financial institution created with seed funding from the Ford Foundation in 1979.

Francisco G. Cigarroa, Ford Foundation Board of Trustees chair, said, “It is an honor to welcome George H. Walker to the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. I look forward to working alongside him and our existing board members to advance the foundation’s mission to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.”

Ford Foundation trustees are elected to the full board and serve six-year terms. Trustees set broad policies relating to grantmaking, geographic focus, investments, governance, and professional standards, and they oversee independent audits. The foundation’s trustees come from around the world and have extensive experience in the worlds of higher education, business and finance, technology, law, government, and the nonprofit sector.

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Published in Inside Philanthropy

By Darren Walker and david rogers

Every day, members of the Newark Community Street Team (NCST) walk the streets of Newark’s South Ward. They mentor students, ensure safe passage to and from schools, and listen to young people tell them about the loved ones they’ve lost to gun violence. They work in hospitals to support victims of violence and ride with EMS to respond to overdoses. They draw on their own experiences on the street or in prison to connect with the people who are where they’ve been — and to help them find a way out. And ultimately, they keep Newark safe.

Read the full article

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Published in UN Women

To mark International Women’s Day 2024, UN Women India and the Ford Foundation launched a captivating book titled “हम | When Women Lead,” featuring the extraordinary journeys of 75 women leaders from diverse backgrounds across India, who have transcended barriers, defied limits, and made a lasting impact on their communities.

“हम | When Women Lead” is a tribute, not just to the resilient spirit of women leaders in India – but their concrete contributions to nation building.

Coinciding with India’s G20 Presidency in 2023, which emphatically focused on women-led development, this project is not just a collection of stories; it’s an examination of women’s leadership as a key trigger of social transformation and progress.

The book also spotlights the critical importance of investing in women’s empowerment and leadership.

Ford Foundation President Darren Walker joined Ruchira Kamboj, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, and Sima Sami Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women at an event during the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to unveil this remarkable book. He remarked on Ford’s 72 years of partnership with India, supporting ideas, individuals, and institutions, have contributed significantly to nation-building. He emphasized that India is at a pivotal moment to harness its gender dividend, and that a concerted effort to galvanize India’s vibrant base of women leaders at the frontline will be the country’s unique advantage to contribute to SDGs.

Read the full article

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(New York, NY): Today, leading philanthropies in partnership with Apple announced over $4 million in grants through the Spyware Accountability Initiative to address the harms of the global spyware industry on civil society. The nearly two dozen organizations supported by these grants will leverage regulation, litigation, and investigation to ensure that governments and corporations cannot use state-sponsored mercenary spyware to harm or unjustly surveil the civil society organizations that keep them in check.

The Ford Foundation’s Dignity and Justice Fund, fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund (NVF), launched the Spyware Accountability Initiative with a founding contribution by Apple and additional support from Open Society Foundations, Okta for Good, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Grantees of the Dignity and Justice Fund’s Spyware Accountability Initiative were recommended to the board of NVF by the Fund’s advisory board, which consists of members of the Ford Foundation leadership team. An independent, global technical advisory committee advised on the Fund’s grantmaking strategy. Over the next five years, the Spyware Accountability Initiative will support a growing community of researchers and advocacy organizations investigating, exposing, and bringing accountability to the global mercenary spyware trade.

“Addressing the global spyware industry cannot be the work of any one company or funder or government; it requires an approach as interconnected as our world is today,” said Lori McGlinchey, director of Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program. “Ford Foundation is proud to be a part of the Spyware Accountability Initiative, which harnesses the resources and technical prowess of Apple, the funding and social justice acumen of philanthropy, and the cutting edge research and advocacy of civil society worldwide. The Spyware Accountability Initiative is a major step towards confronting and neutralizing the threat mercenary spyware poses to human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents around the globe.”

In recent years state and non-state actors have used spyware to track and intimidate human rights defenders, political dissidents, and environmental activists, leading to hundreds of acts of physical violence and psychological harm. There is not a single company or piece of malicious software behind these attacks, but a burgeoning and lucrative industry whose footprint extends to virtually every region of the world, and notably the Global South, where the harms of mercenary spyware are most pronounced. 

“Holding mercenary spyware firms and their government clients accountable for their harms will require a  collaborative effort and a growing community of organizations and individuals dedicated to the problem,” said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab. “By supporting initiatives in this area, the Spyware Accountability Initiative will help ensure a growing and vibrant space for digital accountability research and advocacy for years to come.”  

The aim of the Spyware Accountability Initiative is to grow a global field of civil society organizations who are advancing threat research, advocacy and accountability to address the use and trade of spyware. Half of the grants announced today support organizations in the Global South. The Initiative’s first wave of grants focuses on three key areas: international advocacy and litigation; investigations and research; and Global South regional field building and organizational strengthening. Groups supported by grants through the Spyware Accountability Initiative include:

Access Now (Global), Amnesty Tech (Amnesty International) (Global), Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (Global), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (USA), The Citizen Lab (Canada), Data Privacy Brasil (Brazil), Digital Rights Foundation (Pakistan), Epicenter.works (Europe), Hiperderecho (Peru), International Justice Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law (USA), Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (USA), Lighthouse Reports (Netherlands), Media Defence (UK), Media Diversity Institute (Armenia), Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) (Mexico), Red Line for Gulf (UK), SocialTIC (Mexico), Spaces For Change (Nigeria), Unwanted Witness (Uganda).

To learn more, visit the homepage of the Spyware Accountability Initiative.

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Ford Foundation awards fellowship to renowned advocate and scholar to support the foundation’s work on women’s leadership

February 13, 2024 — Today, the Ford Foundation announced that Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, PhD will join the organization as a senior fellow. Kamau-Rutenberg is an activist and academic known for her extensive work on women’s leadership. During her fellowship, she will leverage her decades of experience supporting women’s empowerment to scale Black Women in Executive Leadership (B-WEL), a global initiative focused on improving the numbers, experiences, and impact of Black women in senior and executive leadership across sectors. She will also work closely with Ford’s director for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice International, the BUILD team, and Ford’s fellowship team to inform the foundation’s intersectional work to advance social justice. 

“Dr. Kamau-Rutenberg’s extensive on-the-ground advocacy work and her strong background in academia reflect her unique ability to not only strategize and think big, but set into motion initiatives that can change our perspectives and approaches,” said Ford Foundation executive vice president of programs Hilary Pennington. “Her ongoing collaboration with our program areas and regional offices will further strengthen our efforts to foster responsive solutions that empower women and girls and champion justice and equity. We look forward to learning from each other on our shared journey toward gender justice.” 

“Long inspired by the Ford Foundation’s vision, and with deep admiration for this team of grantmakers and thought leaders, I am thrilled to be joining the foundation as a senior fellow. There are many visionaries on the frontlines of social change around the world whose contributions to our most pressing problems often go unheard because they happen to be Black and female,” said Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg. “B-WEL’s work connecting Black women executives from around the world to learn from each other’s most successful strategies, tools, and tactics in navigating the intersection of patriarchy and anti-Black racism, then leveraging those insights to shape individual and institutional collaborations towards systemic change, is powerfully aligned to the Ford Foundation’s mission and I’m excited for this opportunity to collaborate with Foundation colleagues as, together, we build a more just global society”.  

Kamau-Rutenberg has decades of global experience supporting visionary leaders across a variety of sectors including education, scientific research, food systems, and climate change. Before founding B-WEL, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg served as the inaugural director of the Rise Program, a joint initiative of Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust.  Earlier, she was director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) which works towards inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for the African continent with more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation.  

Kamau-Rutenberg also founded and led Akili Dada, an award-winning leadership incubator and Ford Foundation grantee that invests in high-achieving young women from under-resourced families who are passionate about driving change in their communities.

She has received widespread recognition for her work including prestigious fellowships, and being honored as a White House Champion of Change by the Obama Administration and receiving the United Nations Intercultural Innovation Award. Kamau-Rutenberg has also been recognized on several influential lists, including 100 Most Influential Africans, 100 Most Reputable Africans, and Kenya’s Top 40 Women Under Age 40, among others

She is a member of the selection committee of the Africa Food Prize and serves on the Malabo Montpellier Panel alongside other independent experts who support African governments and civil society in identifying and implementing policies that enhance agriculture, food, and nutrition security across the continent. She also sits on the Board of the Autodesk Foundation, Syngenta Foundation, Landesa, the Global Food Banking Network, and the council of Co-Impact’s Gender Fund & the African Climate Foundation.

She began her career as an assistant professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and a lecturer in International Relations at Hekima College in Nairobi, where her academic research and teaching interests centered on African politics, gender, international relations, ethnicity, and democratization, and the role of technology in social activism.

Born in Kenya, Kamau-Rutenberg holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota,  as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and a Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from Whitman College in Washington, U.S.A.

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