Darren Walker

How many boldfaced names emerge from the nonprofit sector? One. That's because the Ford Foundation president is a prophet who speaks truth to our world's most troubling demons in a manner that unites and inspires all kinds. His friend and collaborator Laurene Powell Jobs finds out what makes him tick.

Here’s a challenge: Find a figure in American philanthropy more inspiring, more knowledgeable, or better able to articulate both the vast import and fundamental limitations of this great national tradition than Darren Walker. The president of the behemoth Ford Foundation for the last decade, he has a story that reaches from rural poverty to corporate law to Wall Street to community organizing in Harlem to his current perch atop a $16 billion dollar organization that he has leveraged into perhaps the greatest force for social justice worldwide.

His day job involves overseeing a sprawling network of grantmakers doling out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to work that promotes social justice in every facet of life, from voting rights to disaster relief to the arts. But his role as an ambassador for these causes is equally notable. Walker’s charming ability to serve both realism and optimism in the same breath when confronting even the thorniest questions (for instance, how does one remedy inequality with the very wealth that stems from it?) is what has captivated world leaders, celebrities, and changemakers alike. Walker sat down with his friend, the philanthropist and Ford Foundation board member Laurene Powell Jobs, to contemplate these very things.

LAURENE POWELL JOBS: It’s an honor for me to speak with you. Let’s start at the beginning and talk a bit about your upbringing.