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News About Former Ford Foundation Staff
Tom Malinowski, who had been Washington director of Human Rights Watch since 2001, was sworn in April 3 as the new assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He worked as a research assistant at the Foundation from 1992 to 1993 after earning a master’s degree in political science from Oxford University’s St. Antony College on a Rhodes scholarship.
He entered public service after leaving Ford, first as a speechwriter and member of the Policy Planning staff at the State Department under Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright and then as a senior director for foreign policy speechwriting on the National Security staff under President William Clinton.
When he left government after the 2000 election he went to work for Human Rights Watch as its Washington director.
Malinowski was born in Poland and came to this country with his mother when he was six years old, settling in Princeton, N.J. He was an intern in the office of Sen. Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Democrat, while still in high school and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
He was a special assistant to New York’s Democratic Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan when he was awarded the Rhodes scholarship.
John Colborn, who worked at the Foundation for 15 years as a program officer and then vice president of operations, has been named director of the Aspen Institute’s Skills for America’s Future, a private-sector initiative that advocates for workforce development practices to address the national workforce skills gap.
Since it was created in 2010, the initiative, part of Aspen’s Economic Opportunities Program, has helped create or expand partnerships among more than 40 employers and 200 community colleges, and formed strategic partnerships with major industry associations.
He started at Ford in 1998 as a program officer and deputy director for Economic Development, working on program strategy for workforce development grantmaking that focussed on community colleges, workforce development policy and workforce intermediaries.
He became director of program management in 2006 and then, in 2010, vice president for operations, where he oversaw grants administration, information technology and operations of the New York headquarters and overseas operations.
Elizabeth Theobald Richards, a former program officer in Media, Arts and Culture, has been appointed to the board of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), which works to build connections among artists, arts organizations and funders.
Richards, a member of the Cherokee nation, oversaw grantmaking at Ford for Native American and place-based cultural communities. Prior to joining Ford she was the inaugural director of public programs at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, where she directed all its educational, interpretive and cultural activities.
She is senior creative fellow at Opportunity Agenda, a progressive communications think tank in New York City that promotes work linking the arts and social justice.
Elizabeth McKeon is the new Program Director of the Ikea Foundation, based in Holland. The foundation works “toward a world where children living in poverty have more opportunities to create a better future for themselves and their families.”
Its mission is to “create substantial and lasting change by funding holistic, long-term programmes in some of the world’s poorest communities that address children’s fundamental needs: home, health, education and a sustainable family income.”
The foundation spends more than $130 million a year on its programs, including grants to organizations in 35 countries. Last year alone it raised more than $10 million through its Soft Toys for Education campaign for UNICEF and Save the Children.
McKeon worked at Ford from 2008 to 2011, as its representative in Moscow and then as director of the Special Initiative in Urban Poverty in Developing Countries.
She is a cabaret singer as well, and her successes in that part of her life are explored in a story now on the Society’s website about current and former Foundation staff working in the arts.
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