Heather Grady

Trustee

Heather is a Vice President in the San Francisco office of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and leads the organization’s strategy and program development in global philanthropy, including collaboratives and research. Heather advises clients from the US and other countries on strategy and a variety of thematic areas. She leads the Scaling Solutions toward Shifting Systems initiative, which encourages funders to collaborate to place longer-term, adaptive resources to accelerate scalable solutions and impact that target systemic changes, and she helped to create the SDG Philanthropy Platform to engage philanthropy in the Sustainable Development Goals. Heather also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the China Global Philanthropy Institute.

Heather’s approach has been shaped in part by two decades of living in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, managing long-term development and humanitarian programs for Oxfam Great Britain and Save the Children that focused on a range of sectors including education, livelihoods, gender equality, health, agriculture and microfinance. Following her time outside the US she served as the Managing Director of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, founded by former Irish President Mary Robinson, and was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. In 2010 she joined the Rockefeller Foundation as Vice President for Foundation Initiatives where she oversaw an annual grantmaking budget averaging $65 million. Heather has degrees from the Kennedy School at Harvard and Smith College. She writes regularly on philanthropy and social investing. She serves on the boards of the Dropbox Foundation, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Forum for the Future, the Wildlife Justice Commission, and is an Advisor to the B Team.