The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Program Director, Education

Foundation Overview

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have been making grants since 1967 to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world.

 “Never stifle a generous impulse,” was a favorite saying of entrepreneur William R. Hewlett, who established the Hewlett Foundation with his wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett, and their eldest son, Walter B. Hewlett. Indeed, it was the personal generosity of Mr. Hewlett, who passed away in 2001, that has made the Hewlett Foundation one of the nation’s largest, with assets of more than $8.5 billion and annual gifts and grant awards of over $400 million. Click here to visit the Foundation’s website.

The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy, population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Foundation’s work is informed by three fundamental values:

• First, the Hewlett Foundation is concerned primarily with solving social and environmental problems. This requires that staff defines program objectives, grants, and other activities in terms of problems to be solved; identifies indicators of progress and criteria for evaluating success; and that the Foundation is prepared to stay the course.
• Second, the solutions to serious problems are seldom known with anything close to certainty. The Foundation must therefore be prepared to experiment and take risks in its philanthropic activities. This, too, entails clear objectives and measures of success, without which staff cannot know how the risk eventuated. It also requires a willingness to acknowledge and learn from failures.
• Third, grantee institutions—nonprofit organizations and, in some cases, government entities—are essential partners in achieving the Foundation’s mission. This explains the high proportion of the Foundation's grants budget allocated to general operating support. It also implies a concern not only for the health of individual organizations, but also for the fields in which they operate.

Education Program

The Education Program makes grants to stimulate reforms and improve instruction in public schools and community colleges in California, and to create and distribute free online academic materials.

The Program’s approach to K–12 school reform in California focuses on improving student achievement and graduation rates. The Foundation’s grantees conduct and disseminate high-quality research about California’s schools, assist policymakers, and stimulate awareness and build public support and political will for systemic reforms. To address the particularly daunting odds facing urban school students in low-income areas, the Education Program supports efforts to improve the quality of instruction in urban school systems by awarding grants for demonstration projects and their evaluation.

K-12 education links directly with California’s community colleges, which are essential to the future of many of the state’s residents. These institutions not only act as springboards to four-year colleges, but prepare students for skilled jobs with prospects of economic mobility. The Education Program supports research on improving the educational outcomes of community colleges, and it disseminates the results of that research to policymakers and the public.

To help equalize access to knowledge and educational opportunities across the world, the Education Program created an initiative in Open Educational Resources (OER), designed to make high-quality academic content freely available on the Internet for anyone, anywhere in the world. In 2001, Hewlett Foundation funding helped launch the OpenCourseWare initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The initiative now makes materials from virtually all of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate courses freely available on the Web. The OpenCourseWare initiative has inspired Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, and dozens of other institutions around the world to provide free, open content on the Internet. Educators, students, and others who have used the MIT site describe it as a boon to teaching and learning.

Currently, the OER grantmaking is managed by an independent program officer;  the extent to which the OER Initiative will be integrated with the Education Program after 2009 depends largely on how the Education Program’s strategies develop.

The Education and Performing Arts programs are also considering the possibility of collaborating on an Arts and Education Initiative.

The Position

Reporting to the Foundation President Paul Brest, the Education Program Director is responsible for managing and directing all program related activities and grant proposals. The Director is responsible for selecting, implementing and managing goals, strategies and initiatives to achieve the Program’s objectives. He/she will collaborate when appropriate with other Program Directors and staff throughout the Foundation.

While the Program Director will work closely with program staff administering the OER initiative, the primary focus of the Program Director will be California education reform.

The Program Director will be responsible for making grants in a combination of program and policy areas. 

Specifically, the responsibilities of the position include:

• Working with staff to implement a grantmaking strategy that makes progress toward improving student achievement and graduation rates.  The program is staffed by two Program Officers and three Program Associates.

• Assuming full management responsibility for the staff, including hiring, training, supervision, performance management, and compensation issues, in close collaboration with Human Resources. The Director will work closely with his/her staff, taking every opportunity to coach and mentor as they work through intricate policy development issues.
  
  

·         The Director will serve as a prominent advocate for education reform through a variety of means, including contributing to publications, making speeches and other presentations, and through personal communications to influential audiences.

·         Working with government leaders in Sacramento in order to inform legislation regarded as essential to reforming education in California.

·         Staying abreast of trends, practices, laws, developments in technology and other related aspects of the Education Program.

• Developing effective working relationships with diverse groups of professionals, professional organizations, foundations, and funding partners. 

• Taking advantage of the Foundation’s convening power and reputation as an honest broker to advance the Program’s goals. 

• Regularly making site visits, attending conferences, and representing the Foundation regarding its education policy and initiatives. Represent the Foundation externally with peer organizations for the purpose of sharing best practices and supporting professional development.

• Reviewing and assessing all grant making proposals and overseeing efforts to drive standards, policies and organizational systems to higher levels to facilitate more effective grant management. 

• Overseeing the overall Program budget, its development, management, and compliance.

• Finally, contributing to the overarching goals of the Foundation and its interest in and practice of strategic philanthropy.  This could include due diligence, goal setting, review of business plans, knowledge building, evaluation, exit strategies, collaboration, and possible use of various program related investments. 

The Candidate

In addition to experience in the education field, the ideal candidate for the position will have a demonstrated record of success as a proven leader in public policy development, program development, program evaluation, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and government relations.  The successful candidate will be able to employ a strategic grantmaking approach that puts a particular emphasis on goal setting and evaluation.

The successful candidate will have the following professional and personal qualifications:

• Experience developing and implementing multi-year public policy strategic initiatives toward reaching desired outcomes. 
  
  
• A sophisticated understanding of what works in the classroom combined with an ability to inform state education policy in all areas of education reform.

• An ability to involve and mobilize a wide variety of partners, including leaders from academic, nonprofit, public and private sectors. 

• Seasoned management skills and outstanding influencing capabilities, and the ability to make sound judgments and decisions.  This individual will lead by example, and have the capacity to attract, develop, and retain a team of talented people. 

·         The director will be very astute regarding building and maintaining key relationships with individuals and partner organizations as well as government leaders.

·         Focused, solutions-oriented government relations skills and a blend of technical, conceptual, and analytical skills.

·         An entrepreneurial spirit, ideally having worked in both for-profit and non-profit environments.

·         An interest in working in an intellectually challenging environment, with an emphasis on contribution and results. 

·         Flexibility to develop new ideas and policy approaches.

Personal Characteristics

The successful candidate will have excellent leadership, interpersonal and communication skills.  He/she must be a strong leader who, in part due to his/her personal presence, style and demeanor, effectively enrolls others in new ideas and programs.  The candidate should be a strong team player and have a history of working well with an over-achieving management group.  This person is by nature a risk-taker and has a high level of ambition.  Equally important, this person must have unquestioned integrity.

Education

Graduate level academic degree in a related field.  Ph.D. or advanced degree in a related field is highly desirable.

Location

This position is based in Menlo Park, California.

Compensation

The Program Director, Education for The Hewlett Foundation will be rewarded with a very competitive compensation package including an attractive base salary and benefits.

Contact

Charles A. Pappalardo

Trilogy Search LLC

330 Primrose Road, Suite 402

Burlingame, CA  94010

650.685.2600 or 650.208.4000