Staff

President and Acting Director, Philanthropy Program

Paul Brest is the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California.  Mr. Brest received an A.B. from Swarthmore College in 1962 and an LL.B from Harvard Law School in 1965.

He served as law clerk to Judge Bailey Aldrich and Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan, and practiced with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., in Jackson, Mississippi, doing civil rights litigation before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1969, where his research and teaching focused on constitutional law and problem solving/decision making.

From 1987 to 1999, he served as the dean of Stanford Law School. Mr. Brest is co-author of Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (5th ed. 2007), and of Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (Oxford University Press, 2010). Together with Hal Harvey he is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy (Bloomberg Press, 2008). He teaches a course on Judgment and Decisionmaking in the Public Policy Program at Stanford. Mr. Brest holds honorary degrees from Northeastern Law School and Swarthmore College, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Read "Foundations" – A Q&A with Paul Brest

Paul also writes a blog for the Huffington Post, which can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-brest

Publications by Paul Brest posted on the Hewlett Foundation Web site:

Hewlett Foundation Annual Report President's Statements

2007 - The Importance of Data

2006 - Creating an Online Information Marketplace for Giving

2005 - On Collaboration (Or How Many Foundations Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?)

2004 - The Hewlett Foundation's Global Commitments

2003 - The Importance of Strategy

2002 - Reconciling Strategic Philanthropy with General Operating Support

2001 - The Hewlett Foundation's Approach to Philanthropy

2000 - An Invitation to Improve the Effectiveness of the Nonprofit Sector

1999 - Strategic Planning