Darren Walker on his decision to leave the Ford Foundation

DArren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, announced on July 22 that he intended to step down from the highly influential position by the end of 2025. During his 11-year tenure, Ford’s endowment grew from just over $11 billion to just under US$17 billion, slightly less than Jamaica’s GDP. He divested the fund of fossil fuels and for-profit prisons and redirected much of the fund’s attention to combating inequality.

Walker, who was born in Ames, Texas, was one of the first children enrolled in the Head Start program, in a one-room schoolhouse. “It opened up a world to me, a world of learning and knowledge and curiosity and thirst to know more about the world,” he says. “It gave me an advantage and changed my life.”

As for his future endeavors, he says he has no plans. “I think it’s important to be clear about what you don’t want to do,” he says. So far, he has excluded the university president and running for public office from his list. He’s primarily focused on the next 15 months and gently leading one of America’s biggest moneymakers into the next era. He spoke to TIME in the foundation’s board member meeting room the day after announcing his departure.

You are leaving the Ford Foundation at what you say is a critical time in its history. What do you mean by that?

If we are a philanthropy committed to the idea that democracy is the best form of government and that full citizen participation is essential for healthy democracies, this is a challenging time. Hope is the oxygen of democracy, but inequality is the enemy of hope. How do we imagine a flourishing democracy when we have growing numbers of people who feel excluded and left behind, dissatisfied and disillusioned, and therefore hopeless? Desperate people will do things we thought would never be possible in our society. That worries me.

Americans have begun to realize that inequality is built into the system. It is a structural inequality, which is very difficult to eradicate without destroying the structure. Can you point to a program that began to reform rather than destroy?

I am a reformer, not a destroyer. I believe that capitalism is the best way to organize an economy, but I am not naive. The type of capitalism we have now does not generate shared prosperity. People like me benefit most from the current system. Over the years, we have supported research and policy development on asset-building strategies. I’ll give you an example: Baby bonds, a way of setting aside money at the beginning of a newborn’s life that adds value over the years. This is a mechanism for addressing inequality because it allows, at some point in adulthood, an amount of capital that can make a college education possible, or a down payment on a house, or starting a small business. We need three things to fund a program: an institution, a strong and fantastic individual at the helm, and a powerful idea, an idea that may be marginal but that our support can help make popular. Our early support, for example, to Muhammad Yunus, when he was an unknown economics professor in Bangladesh, who brought an idea of ​​macrocredit to rural women, a fringe idea in the 1970s that is now part of World Bank policy.

People who resist the notion that income inequality is a bad thing often say that billionaires have the ability to weather big swings. And if you don’t have those risk-takers, you won’t make progress. How would you respond to that?

I think it’s important not to demonize the rich. I think one of the special attributes of this country is that people with very modest resources can be extraordinarily successful. And we should celebrate that success and the wealth it creates. Henry Ford was a complicated character. And there’s no doubt he would be surprised if a gay black man was the president of his foundation. I think the fact that I am is a testament to the progress that has been made in America in my lifetime and to the ideals that are written into our Constitution, which inspire people all over the world and certainly inspire me. The contradiction that resides in American philanthropy is a metaphor for the larger contradictions that exist in American society. My love for this country is unwavering, in part because this country is the only place in the world where my story could be possible. But I believe that if we have so much inequality that the balance of wealth distorts our democracy, then we should react against that. Because democracy cannot be sustained. When democracy and capitalism intersect, democracy must win. Capitalism must exist and be vibrant and muscular, but it must also produce some semblance of shared prosperity.

Are there cases where you think philanthropy does more harm than good?

The things I find problematic for philanthropy are not the grants, but the way we invest the billions in our investment portfolios. In our case, when we reflect on our own behaviors, we learn some surprising things about ourselves. On the one hand, we want to reform the criminal justice system and reduce the expansion of for-profit prisons. And in our investments, we were investing in the prison system; How to reconcile this? How do you balance being a public health foundation, looking to improve the health of people in low-income communities, and then being a significant investor in the biggest polluter in those communities? These are the paradoxes that I believe are the most challenging: How do we do our best to ensure we are not harming the money we invest?

I know you hoped New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison would close. It remains open. Why is it so hard?

I served on the Commission on the Future of Rikers Island. And among the recommendations was absolutely that Rikers should be closed as quickly as possible and that there should be small facilities in other parts of the city. The challenge is that we have some advocates who are abolitionists and who don’t want prisons. And we have citizens who don’t want facilities in their community. It’s very frustrating. It’s not because there isn’t momentum to close Rikers. We need a minimum number of decent beds in this city where people can be treated with dignity.

Have you received a lot of criticism from abolitionists, including former Ford comrades who protested against you outside this building? Was that smart?

I was deeply hurt, emotionally, very, very hurt by the protesters and by the disapproval of some of my own employees. But one of the things you learn about leadership is that you need to be guided by values, principles, and structure to face really complex challenges. And this was one of those occasions. In my personal life, I just lost my partner [David Beitzel]. It was painful. There is no other way to describe it. But I don’t regret the decision I made.

While you were at Ford, we saw the rise of several prominent women philanthropists. They are different?

The most exciting philanthropy going on in America today is led by women philanthropists – Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, Laurene Powell Jobs, Alice Walton, Barbara Hostetter. These women are doing philanthropy differently. They are not interested in controlling their beneficiaries. Much of philanthropy aims to control our beneficiaries, guiding them to do what we want them to do and to be responsible for our investments. These women are taking a different approach when they say, “We want to support institutions.”

Are there any big moon projects you wish you had started sooner?

I wish I had started sooner with the issue of philanthropy and AI. We have a working group – a group of foundations met recently. I wish we had started this sooner and developed a framework for how AI could help us in grantmaking, to improve and bring efficiencies. And think about what the implications are for philanthropy? What are the implications for our grantees, most of whom do not have the resources or time to explore this issue?

When you lead an organization like this, how does it affect your personal relationships?

There’s no doubt that when you become president of a foundation, you breathe rarefied air, you never eat a bad meal. When you’re the president of the Ford Foundation, people go out of their way to be respectful, to offer incredible kindness, because most people want something from that. So there are a lot of people that I engage with in a very transactional way. I will be able to move forward after leaving Ford with joy, happiness and confidence that I am a good person. But I will definitely have fewer friends and have more dinners with real friends.

If you were starting now with just $1 million, what would you do?

I would probably look for ways to influence thinking about policy and technology that ensure we get the best out of technology while also mitigating the harm. I believe technology will be the intervening force of opportunity in our society. And we cannot allow the prejudice, discrimination and injustice that existed in the analog world to simply be transferred to the digital world. This will only worsen inequality.