The Ford Foundation has appointed Heather Gerken as its next President, succeeding Darren Walker in November. Currently dean of Yale Law School, Gerken is a nationally recognized expert on constitutional law and democracy.Throughout her career, Gerken has championed the rule of law and expanded access to civil rights and the legal field. At Yale, she launched the first full-tuition scholarships for low-income students and expanded pathways for student veterans. She founded and led Yale Law School’s innovative litigation clinic, the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project Clinic, which secured transformative victories, including a multimillion-dollar settlement in opioid litigation and the landmark case that legalized marriage equality in California.
Before Yale, Gerken was a professor at Harvard Law School and a legal associate at Jenner & Block, where she litigated voting rights cases and achieved a significant settlement in housing desegregation. She also clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The news of her appointment was met with enthusiasm across civil society, nonprofit, academia, legal, and business sectors, with Gerken earning praise for her fierce intellect, visionary thinking, integrity, courageous leadership, and more.
“We celebrate this historic moment and look forward to formally welcoming our 11th president to the Ford Foundation in November,” a publication by the Foundation said.
