Bradford K. Smith

Bradford K. Smith is president of the Foundation Center, a national nonprofit service organization recognized as the nation’s leading authority on organized philanthropy. The Center maintains the most comprehensive database on U.S. grantmakers and their grants around the world; issues a wide variety of print, electronic, and online information resources; conducts and publishes research on trends in foundation growth, giving, and practice; and offers an array of free and affordable educational programs.

Before joining the Foundation Center in 2008, Mr. Smith was president of the Oak Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, a major family foundation with programs and grant activities in 41 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Prior to joining the Oak Foundation he developed and led the Ford Foundation's Peace and Social Justice Program, the foundation's largest program area. During his ten-year tenure as vice president, the program provided hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations working on issues of human rights, international cooperation, governance, and civil society in the U.S. and around the world.

Mr. Smith has devoted his entire career to the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. He first joined the Ford Foundation as a program officer in its Brazil office. Prior to that, he directed the Brazil program of the Inter-American Foundation. At the start of his career, he worked for the YMCA of the USA, both in Costa Rica and New York, where he became manager for world development at its Center for International Management Studies.

Mr. Smith holds an M.A. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York and a B.A. in anthropology and ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan.

Updated 6/29/09