Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio)

really interesting conversation. I found him kind of randomly reading something about another project I was working on in philanthropy, and I ended up coming across something he had written, and I was very much enchanted by it, and I had the folks here reach out to him, and apparently he's very well known to everybody here. He runs a

huge philanthropic organization. Other people in the Bloomberg family run uh philanthropic organizations, and so I meet him, thinking, I'm gonna sneak this guy in who no one's ever heard of, and it will be quite a coup to to find somebody that people are not familiar with. I'm not exaggerating when I say from the elevator to the studio, which is really not all that far, dozens of people stopped him, Darren,

how are you? And it's it was just fascinating, and people looked at me, how do you know this guy. I read something you wrote. I thought it was really interesting. So if you're at all interested in philanthropy and how a twelve billion dollar foundation decides where it's gonna put its money, how it's gonna measure it, how it's gonna stay on top of it, um, I think you'll find this to be an absolutely fascinating conversation. So, without any

further ado, my chat with Ford Foundations Darren Walker. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is Darren Walker. He is the president of the nearly thirteen billion dollar Ford Foundation. A little background about Mr Walker, formerly an attorney with Cleary Gottlieb and an investment banker at UBS. He is running this massive foundation, but he hails from humble beginnings.

Born in a charity hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, raised by a single mom, he became one of the first children to benefit uh from the head Start program. And let me tell you, he has certainly accomplished a lot in a relatively short period of time. In addition to being president of the Ford Foundation, he is on the boards of Carnegie Hall, the New York City Ballet, the High Line Park, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many American

Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the co chair of the New York Public Library Council and Vice chairman of the New York City Ballet. Darren Walker, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you, Verry. Happy to be here. I'm excited to talk to you about a lot of things. But before we get into the details of the Ford Foundation and its portfolio, you're really a real, live Horatio algia story.

How does one go from relatively humble beginnings too on the board of all these prestigious institutions I just named, well, first one is lucky enough to be born in America, doesn't hurt. I was born in America, and that meant that I was born in a country where even a poor African American kid could have dreams and those dreams,

those aspirations could be realized. That's the country that we have lived in, and at the Ford Foundation, we're asking that question, can we continue to be a land of opportunity where little Darren Walker's and lots of others like me can dream and have those dreams be realized. So let's get into the realization of that dream. And I'm gonna pull some quotes that that I've found in various fightings of yours. You once said a teacher to you,

the value of quote learning self control? What does that mean? Well, at the time, I was a fleling, rather undisciplined third grader who was constantly getting into trouble. Familiar my third grade teacher, Mrs Majors, took me aside after class and she sat me down and she gave me a stern talking to as we say back home. She said, little boys like you who get in trouble too often end up not succeeding. And I worry that you are going to get in trouble and are going to end up

not succeeding in life, and you can succeed. And it was having her tell me that I could succeed, but that in order for me to succeed, I needed to gain control of my emotions, my temper, dealing with issues I was dealing with that home in the classroom and manifesting a lot of bad behavior. But your third grade what are you eight years old at the time? Is that about right? Who makes a life choice? To gee,

I really have to get my act together when they're eight. Well, I understood because I saw some of my cousins what was happening to them as early as the third grade, for example, being put in special education. Some of my cousins who I played with as a little boy, by high school were already in juvenile centers. And sadly, seven of my cousins ended up in prison, and and one of my cousins committed suicide in a Paris jail in Louisiana.

And you were aware of the risks of not being in control, even at that early age, at least after the teacher brought this to your attention. Absolutely, I was aware of it, and I was aware of the consequences because it was right in front of me. I would hear my mother talk about stories of what was happening in our family. I'd see it in our community, and I hear about it from others. So I was aware that if you are a bad boy, bad things happened to you. So less fast forward a couple of years,

you go to college, go to law school. How does one make the transition from bad kid to good lawyer to philanthropy A lot of luck, a lot of hard work, and a lot of people cheering me on along the way. That's a theme that in the various other eighty or so interviews we've done here, hard work and a little bit of luck comes up over and over again. So, so you're a practicing attorney, what tell me what the

transition is like? How does how do you decide I'm going to give up the law librarian and and move towards a different focus with my life. Well, one thing happened for me. I have to be honest, I didn't find my way into the nonprofit sector, the charitable sector early in my career. I was very clear with myself when I was in college and law school that I never again wanted to be poor. I feared, more than anything else, being poor. And so because of that, I

used my my my law degree, I went into business. UM, I had a good run on Wall Street. But for me, it was never about piling up money. It was about comfort and finding myself in a position so that I could, for example, take care of my mother, UM support my sisters as they were going to college. And I was able to do that, and for me, that was enough. But what I didn't have was passion. I didn't have the day to day excitement about doing good in the world.

And that's what I was yearning for. And I was lucky enough to meet a man named Calvin Butts, who was the minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Darren Walker. He is the president of the Ford Foundation. And for those of you who may not be familiar with this philanthropic enterprise.

Founded in nineteen thirty six by Edsel and Henry Ford with a twenty five thousand dollar gift from Exel Ford. By n seven, the Foundation owned of the non voting shares of Ford Motor Company thanks to additional gifts. Right now the foundation is about twelve and a half billion dollars in assets and gives out over five million dollars per year in grant So let's talk about the mission of the Ford Foundation, which is an advancing human welfare.

That's a little broad. What does that mean. What it means is encouraging human achievement, reducing poverty, allowing the poor, the marginalized in all parts of the world to have their dreams, realized through education, through livelihoods, through human and civil rights, and participation in governance through the environment. These are all areas where the Ford Foundation programs. So how do you decide specifically what's a fund because again, these

are such broad topics. Do do you fly over at thirty thousand feet and and try and affect how people perceive different areas? Or is it more up close and personal you're rolling up your sleeves and really doing uh land campaign, a door to door campaign. How do you decide how micro or macro you want to get, how granular with any of the projects you're working on. Well, today we work in eleven regions of the world, including the United States, so we work in place based strategy.

But we start by asking the question, what's the greatest threat to human welfare? What's the greatest threat to our objective of a more just, fair and peaceful world. We believe the greatest threat is growing inequality in the world now. Of course, climate change and insecurity these are major threats

of our time. But the threat that we have chosen to focus on is growing inequality because in many ways it represents the greatest threat to opportunity because without opportunity, it's impossible to have social mobility and human achievement, and that's our north star. Now, within that, we ask who are the populations of people who traditionally have had the least opportunity and who whose welfare have been more ATSK And we begin with girls and women because around the world,

girls and women have traditionally been excluded and marginalized. We talk about minorities, ethnic, religious, racial minorities, UH, rural communities, urban communities, people who in the United States, for example, are isolated in prisons and in a criminal justice system that isn't serving our country at all. These are the populations we focus on. These are the people whose lives we seek to improve, because when their lives are improved, they contribute to a better society. So let me ask

you this question because I saw some fascinating data. Obviously, UH, since Picketty's book came out on Capitalism, there's been a whole lot of talk about income inequality. But some of the data I've seen has suggested the while income inequality is expanding in countries like the United States and parts of Europe, when you look at the entire world, thanks partly to people in China and India rising up out

of poverty, Global income inequality is actually contracting. How does that impact the way you um look to focus your efforts, your money's and your key focus. Well, I don't think we should be distracted by aggregate numbers. We have to look within countries and society. So China has certainly had poverty reduced, but income inequality there is at its greatest level. From India is the same the US, much of the Latin American countries, and of course in Africa we're seeing

seeing a widening gap. So we should be alarmed by this. Now the question is how do we help reduce inequality? And we believe we've got to focus on those drivers of inequality, and we believe those drivers include a few a few profound elements in our society. Give us a few examples. So one driver is what we call entrenched cultural narratives, and these are narratives that undermine fairness, tolerance,

and inclusion. And those narratives could be narratives, for example, in the India context, that dullut the lower cast are in fact supposed to be the lower cast, or in the United States that the fact that most of the people in American prisons are African, American and Latino. That maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. So we allow narratives to justify why injustice exists in our society

and to validate that it's okay. How do you push back at a narrative like, well, you have a lot of minorities in American prison, but they're they're because they did something wrong. That's a that's a prety common belief. How do you push back against the narrative these guys are there because they did something wrong. Well, first of all,

the American people are fair. They want the evidence. And so when we start to produce the evidence, for example, through films, through media, through evidence and good research that demonstrates, for example, that there is a differential prejudice in treatment of h of people who are arrested for marijuana or powder cocaine and people who are primarily white, and people who are arrested for crack who are primarily black, That there is a differential treatment in our judicial system, and

that one example is manifest across the entire criminal justice system in this country. I'm Barry Reholts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Darren Walker. He is the president of the Ford Foundation, a twelve and a half billion dollar endowment that gives away about half of billion dollars a year in special grants working on improving the human condition. I know that's broad,

but it's true. Let's talk a little bit about the mechanism that you guys use to spread a little um good work around the world, and that's the portfolio of of the foundation twelve point five billion. Is that a bullpark more or less correct? And so what is your role in terms of overseeing the foundation's management of its own capital. Well, I'm ut ultimately accountable to our trustees for UH the enterprise of the Ford Foundation, which includes

our investment portfolio. But I'm very lucky because we have one of the best people working UH in investment management today, Eric Dobstat, as our ce IO. Eric is aided by a terrific team of staff who are professionals, have come from all walks of life and from the public and private sector, and bring a remarkable capacity to make smart investments, to choose high impact managers, and to do very very well.

So how much that that raises an interesting question. How much of the portfolio you guys running in house and how much goes to outside managers, and what sort of managers are these hedge funds, venture capitalist, private equity, etcetera. We don't manage any of our investment in house. We have a traditional mix of asset classes, primarily hedge funds and private equity. But we've got a long term investment horizon. We aren't looking to beat the market in any short

term way. Um our investment strategy is very much like our grant making strategy. We are long term investor because we believe over the long term, by not being slavish too near term concerns were able to generate more value, more stability, less volatility, and better returns. So I've always wondered about this. You have a a terrible year like oh, eight oh nine with the financial crisis, a fund that's running twelve billion dollars or so, I'm assuming it might

have been a little less before the crisis. What's it like on the ramparts when suddenly the tide goes out and the market is cut in half and then some Well, we've got to also give credit to our trustees. We have an outstanding group of trustees who manage with Eric our portfolio from a governance perspective, So we have a very clearly articulated investment policy. UH. Those sidelines of that policy establish the guardrails UH within which Eric and his

team can invest. And we don't panic. We don't become overly concerned about what's happened today or tomorrow or even next month. Necessarily what we are concerned about or what are the long term trends, what are the implications over multiple quarters of FED policy, UM, of what's happening in UH emerging markets UH and and we have great managers, so we listen to those managers. We synthesize and harmonize

their input, their counsel, their wisdom and UM. They have done very well UM with us and UM and so we continue to stick with them. So the foundation is eighty years old, one would assume it has a longer term perspective and doesn't get caught up in the week to week, month to month volatility that we see. But

even the most staid and rational people in No. Eight or nine, there was a little bit of panic in the streets UH when people thought the entire financial system was going to freeze, and who knows if if g E or McDonald's was going to meet their payroll. Inside the hallowed walls of the Ford Foundation, you're telling me, Gee,

this is rough, but not a lot of panic. Well, I think it's fair to say that we were very, very distressed by what happened UM during that period, but it was a slow, thoughtful, deliberative process that led us to our rebalancing of the portfolio. UM. We have a policy that ensures that we at all times have sufficient liquidity, so there was never a question as to our being able to meet our obligations for grants or operations, and

so could look for the long haul. And over these last six to seven years we have had outstanding performance. And I'm proud to say that Eric and his team continue to deliver great results, which means we have more money to give away. I'm Barry rid Hilts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest

today is Darren Walker. He is the president of the Ford Foundation, a twelve point five billion dollar endowment that gives away a half a billion dollars per year to advance human Wealthare So, so let's get into the specifics of that. What does that look like in the real world where the rubber meets the road. You're giving away a half a billion dollars a year, is that you know? Five million dollar grants? Is it lots of small grants? And take us through a typical grant. What do you

hope to accomplish with any specific grants? Well, we have

large grants and we have smaller grants. And for us, a large grant would be one that we made last year, a hundred and twenty five million dollars towards the Grand Bargain to help resolve Detroit's bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of America, and it was a it was a daunting task, but ultimately the bankruptcy was resolved because a group of foundations and the Governor of Michigan came together with the Detroit Institute of the Arts to

raise eight hundred million dollars that made it possible for the city to pay its retirees their pensions and to help the museum which owned um which was owned by the city uh to keep its art on its walls, which it was and at risk of having to sell. So that was a hundred and twenty million dollars towards an eight hundred million dollar UH pool of money, So

that's a large grant for big impact. Who were the co investors and that the co investors were the Kellogg Foundation, Night Foundation, Kresky Foundation, um UH, the Fisher Foundation locally, UM the Mott Foundation. These are national foundations and local philanthropies together that came rescue Detroit. Essentially, is that dead rim possession financing or is it just to shore up the art museum because there was going to be a

fire cell auction if that that wasn't resolved. It was to shore up the museum and to allow the city to have the money to in turn pay UH the pension, which which raises an interesting question. Do we run the risk of having taxpayers abdicate their responsibility to municipalities If foundations are coming in and really doing what what the state itself should be doing, well, philanthropy could never play the role of government. We're a rounding error in the

federal government's budget. All of our assets together is a rounding era in the federal government's budget. So let's be real about the potential. What we can do is catalyze, innovate, demonstrate solutions. So I've given you an example of a large grant. Let's talk about a smaller grant, a grant for five thousand dollars, and that grant supports investigative journalism through our media program, because we believe that in a

democracy we need strong media. Well, a recent grant led to UH much of the public knowledge around what's happening in Flint, Michigan. We supported UH. This was the a c l U grant. A c LU made it possible for them to hire a journal who blogged about issues of governance and started covering what was going on in Flint. He was among the first to bring to the public's attention what was happening in Flint, Michigan. And that's one of the great tragedies of recent years. App talking about

abdication of governmental responsibility. While and this is one of the drivers of inequality, which is this idea that we are failing to invest and protect vital public goods. A vital public good like infrastructure, our water system is essential.

It's vital to the very operations of a city of a civilization in fact, and yet this city of a hundred thousand people does not have a decent infrastructure because a decision was made to switch systems cheaper, cheaper, system less reliable, less reliable, technically uh ineffective, and what it is yielded, of course, we know, is one of the greatest calamities and greatest embarrassed embarrassments UH in this country

in many, many years. The fascinating thing is, I've heard people refer to Flint as a one off, but I bet there and I've read and heard about that this is in a unique situation, and there are lots of Flint like infrastructure problems on the verge of busting out onto the public eye. We've ignored our infrastructure for decades, haven't we. Well. In fact, our public infrastructure represents an investment in public goods, whether it's public libraries, public transportation,

public schools, public parks, public housing. All of this together undergirds our democracy, our society, American civilization, and we have con assistently been under investing and in fact disinvesting in the very infrastructure that we depend on for our democracy to work. We see certain politicians talking about China and say what you will about their economic competition. They have

made massive infrastructure investments and it's paying off for them. Well, you only have to return from the sparkling new airport in Beijing and land at JFK or even worse, La Guardia to to understand what it feels like to go from walking in a public facility and being uplifted to walking into a public facility and feeling despair. It's amazing. We were the leaders for the longest time, and we stopped making those investments, and everybody else's leap frogged us.

They are leap progging us, but it's not too late, because the American people want to pest in public infrastructure. They want better public transportation, better public parks, they want our public housing to work for the people who live within those communities. And without investing in public goods and

public infrastructure, our democracy simply won't be effective. And at the end of the day, this is why inequality has to be a rallying cry, because at the core of the American experience is opportunity, our aspiration to be a better society and a better people, and growing inequality reduces opportunity. It squelches our aspirations and our ambitions, and it makes us cynical and angry, and it affects our politics, no doubt. You see a lot of anger amongst certain people who

want to make America great again. That's how it manifests itself because these basic infrastructures have been ignored for so long. Well, it also manifests because another driver of inequality is the rules of the economy, that that people don't have confidence that our economy actually works in a way that delivers

shared prosperity. Most Americans, unfortunately, according to polls, believe that our system is increasingly rigged, rigged for the wealthy or political elites, and that our historic notion of shared prosperity is slipping away from us as a nation. That's partly why many Americans are angry. Makes sense to me, let me mix this up a little bit with you and and ask you this question. What can't money do? You're

giving away half a billion knows a year. What have you looked at that you've said, Gee, I'd love to fix this, but money isn't going to help this. Well, I think there are situations where we have to recognize that culture, that behavior, that what is normative in a society has to be hit head on and that can't

necessarily be fixed with money. Um the fact, it is true that we can invest in girls education, but that will only go so far if you live in a culture where men demean women as a matter of belief. How do we get at those belief structures that hold us back, that hold women down in those cultures? And money alone won't solve that problem. So how do you how do you pursue that? How do we apply pressure? You apply pressure in that instant by going to the

people who are the carriers of culture. So it may be a religious leader, it may be a senior elder of the rural village on the community, and you've got to influence them to see that women have to be valued, that girls have to be valued and shouldn't be married off at age nine or ten. To get them out of the way, We've got to attack root cause issues and sometime money alone isn't enough. We've been speaking with

Darren Walker, he's the president of the Ford Foundation. If people want to learn more about the foundation, where's the best place for them to go to to get some more info? To go to our website w w board Foundation dot org. If you enjoy this conversation. Be sure and stick around. We keep the tape rolling and continue chatting. Be sure and check out any of our prior interviews. You can find them on iTunes and on Bloomberg dot com. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com,

or follow me on Twitter at rid Holts. I'm Barry Ridholts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to the podcast half of the show where I just throw my arms out for no no good reason. So, Darren, I have to ask you a question that you said something that's astonishing to me. Why would the Ford Foundation have to support elite universities in the nineteen fifties and sixties, Harvard, Yale, all the big schools. They've had a huge endowment for

years and years and years. Why do they need help from little old Ford Foundation. Well, in the nineteen fifties, their endowments weren't so large, really, indeed, UH, And in the nineteen fifties they didn't have departments, for example, in a various studies. UH, there were certain academic areas, for example, business schools before the nineteen fifty business degrees were UH. In some ways technical degrees, they weren't quote unquote professional degrees.

The professional Masters of Business Administration really came into the four in the nineteen fifties in part because of Ford and Carnegie corporations investments in professionalizing business administration and business UH learning. In part because the belief was and I think ultimately was proven that that we needed to UH, we needed to generate a a generation of business leaders who needed UH to be professionally educated about business business administration.

New disciplines of finance and accounting were created during this period. So what we think of today the m b a UM with not what it is today in the nineteen fifties. That's fascinating. Course, in my head one my mind's I when I hear the lead institutions needing help, I'm thinking Harvard is almost forty billion, Stanford is right behind them. M I t L. You go down the list, University

of Pennsylvania that's you know, to three billion dollars. If you take the top ten twenty schools, and then everybody after them is is not nearly as as successful. But that's fascinating how that shift happened. So one of the questions I didn't ask you is during the broadcast portion

is how do you measure success? Clearly on the on the example you give from the fifties, there's a measure of success because the United States has turned out and is thought of as a leader in business business management. So something a little more esoteric and a little more challenging, like inequality or are like I'm trying to think of you mentioned the number of people of color in prison? How do you measure success of your brands to like it's such a I'm having a hard time spinning out

the work. It's an overwhelming societal issue. How do you measure progress in that? So let's just take the example you gave. Let's talk about the criminal justice system and reforming that system. So we would say there are two things we want to reform. One is the rehabilitation process to ensure that prisoners actually have a chance for education and rehabilitation. Right now, that's terrible because the recidivious rates

are like eight plus percent. Well, it's terrible in part because prisoners are no longer eligible for federal education support while incarcerated. Yes, that makes sever most Americans don't know that, but that is in fact the law. How did that become law. It was part of the War on drugs, which is a huge part of the problem. And that those policies, which were promulgated by both Republican and Democratic administrations have in fact contributed to these high rates of recidivism.

So let's change that policy to ensure that more people while incarcerated get educated and rehabilitative services. So that's one thing. So when President Obama said that he wishes to change that policy, and and he named various programs like the barred Prison initiatives, which the Forward Foundation, Open Society and

others fund, that's an example. If we can get those kinds of programs demonstrated, the efficacy of them demonstrated, and replicated in prisons across America, we in turn will contribute to reducing recidivism. So that's one example. Let me stop you there. You go into a specific and and you fund one prisons program because the FEDS can't, you demonstrate its success, and then you go back to Congress and

say we did it in one program. Your entire penal system has an eight six failure rate or recidivism rate, but people coming out of our program has at recidivism rate. Use our program, and you'll lower your costs going forward. So the organizations we support, like the Barred Prison Initiative,

in fact do just that. They build the evidence. They work with research firms like M d r C and the Urban Institute to demonstrate the efficacy, and they in turn speak to policymakers, decision makers, editorial boards about the need to change policy. I have so many questions, and I know they're gonna come kick us out of the studio quickly, So let me just go to my three favorite questions. So first, UM, not this one. I don't even need to look at it. So who are your

early mentors? You mentioned a pastor from from one group. Who else were important mentors in your professional career? Well, my my mother was a great mentor because my mother did not have UH formal education beyond high school. UM had a horrific childhood in rural Louisiana and overcame UH domestic violence, UH, a very dysfunctional home life, and I think UH always had courage and determination. The other person was my grandfather, who was in some ways not my grandfather.

He was my great uncle, but it's too complicated to go into. However, he only had a third grade education. And yet he had so much wisdom and knowledge, and I learned from him the need to be focused, um, and the need to be disciplined as well, because he was a very disciplined person. He was also angry. He was angry that America had not lived up to its obligations to him because in his little racist town in rural Louisiana, school for negroes ended at the third grade.

Because after the third grade, the boys and girls picked cotton, and and so he never had an opportunity to get a formal education. He has every right to be angry. UM, let me, let me change topics and ask you about books. What are some of your favorite books? Fiction, non fiction, finance, doesn't matter. What what? What books have been influential? I am right now reading Evicted. Uh. This is a remarkable book.

I actually actually say I just ordered it because it was on back order on a group of people who have been evicted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Uh. And it's it. It crystallizes for us the challenge of housing and the distorted housing marketplace we have in this country, and particularly if you're a low income and of course we see it here in New York City with a number of people on the streets. The homeless situation here much worse,

not just in New York but across the country. I was just in Houston and it seemed that on every street corner there were people uh congregating um. And clearly there are people, many of whom have mental health issues. Mental health issues, but housing and shelter us have got

to be addressed. I assume you've followed the experiment in Utah, which by all appearances appear to have been a huge success, taking people and essentially taking homeless and giving them a place to live at no cost, which allows them to access mental health counseling, to actually have a place so they can get meds to treat whatever whatever it happens to be. Of all places, Utah has been tremendously innovative, and it appears that this is a huge success. It

is a huge success. But let us not forget that in New York City, Roseanne Haggarty Common Ground in the nineteen eighties and nineties demonstrated the efficacy of supportive housing, which is what you're describing in Utah. Have we forgotten about that here? We have not invested enough in it. That's the issue. We know what works. The issue is do we have the will to invest in what works. Often people say our problems in this country are just intractable.

They are not intractable. We know that many of our problems can be solved, and we've in fact demonstrated solutions. We have not been willing to invest in those solutions. Fascinating My last two questions, So are millennial or someone coming out of college grabs Darren Walker on the at some events and says, I'm really interested in a career in philanthrop p What sort of advice would you give them?

Don't come to a philanthropy would be my advice, because a young person should be working in a nonprofit, working in government, working in the private sector, and getting a very deep understanding of the problems at the ground level. UM. Sometimes being in a foundation can be be in uh put you in rarefied air, and I think it's uh.

It would be a mistake for a young person to go right into a foundation and and start their career and stay in a foundation without working in the rural villages of Africa or the streets of the South side of Chicago, or in a health clinic. UM in a low income community in Oakland, California, to understand the lack of access that people have to health in this country. So these are all the things that I think prepare

you when you're young. Doing that kind of work makes it possible for you to be better when you actually come into philanthropy. And my final question, I wish we

had more time. I have listened lists. What is it that you know about the world of philanthropy today that you wish you knew twenty or so years ago when you when you moved into this That philanthropy has a role in influencing and shaping public opinion and public perceptions and hopefully building uh narrative about the solutions for our society. That philanthropy has an R and D role to play

in developing solutions. I like to say that at the Fourth Foundation, we're in the business of hope because America is a nation that depends on hope and we need it now more than ever. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. We've been speaking with Darren Walker. He is the president of the Ford Foundation. Darren, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I have another hour's worth of questions, but I know we have to uh, we have to

move along. If you've enjoyed this conversation, be sure and look Upward Down an Inch on iTunes and you can see any of the eighty or so other such podcasts that we've had. UH. Be sure and follow me on Twitter at rid Holtz, or check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com. I'm Barry rid Holtz. You've been listening to Masters and Business on Bloomberg Radio.