Protected: Hilary Pennington

Hilary Pennington is the foundation’s executive vice president for program. She oversees all of foundation’s programs globally, working closely across programs and offices to ensure strategic, meaningful, and well-aligned global grant making. She also oversees the foundation’s BUILD program, and the Office of Strategy and Learning. Before assuming her current role, she served as the foundation’s vice president for Education, Creativity, and Free Expression. 
 
A national expert on postsecondary education and intergenerational change, Pennington joined the foundation in 2013. Earlier, she was an independent consultant whose clients included the Next American University project of the New America Foundation and Arizona State University.  
 
Between 2006 and 2012, Pennington served as director of education, postsecondary success, and special initiatives at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before joining Gates, she was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, a research and policy development organization she co-founded. She also served on President Bill Clinton’s transition team and as co-chair of his administration’s presidential advisory committee on technology. 
 
Pennington serves on the boards of Bard College, the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and the European Foundation Centre, and she is a member of the Trinity Church Vestry. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Management and Yale College, and she holds a graduate degree in social anthropology from Oxford University and a master’s degree in theological studies from the Episcopal Divinity School.