S7E10: Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander is president of the Mellon Foundation.

Alexander spent most of her career as a professor before joining the Ford Foundation in 2015 as its director of creativity and free expression. She recalls that Ford Foundation president Darren Walker

plucked me out of the chorus line and said, What we need is not necessarily someone who has been in philanthropy. What we need is someone who comes with discernment and ideas and exposure.

And also, to my eternal gratitude, he said, Wow, chairing African American studies — which I was doing at Yale at the time — because of the way that you interface with the law school, the divinity school, the school of forestry, many, many, many different departments… you’re actually running a very complex organization.

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By Jessica Helfand & Ellen McGirt

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

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Ellen McGirt is an author, podcaster, speaker, community builder, and award-winning business journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media company that has maintained the same clear vision for more than two decades: to expand the definition of design in service of a better world. Ellen established the inclusive leadership beat at Fortune in 2016 with raceAhead, an award-winning newsletter on race, culture, and business. The Fortune, Time, Money, and Fast Company alumna has published over twenty magazine cover stories throughout her twenty-year career, exploring the people and ideas changing business for good. Ask her about fly fishing if you get the chance.