An acclaimed poet, scholar, and cultural advocate, Elizabeth Alexander is a nationally recognized thought leader on race, justice, the arts, and American society. As president of the Mellon Foundation, she leads a multi-billion-dollar philanthropy and the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities, supporting educational institutions and cultural organizations while envisioning and guiding new initiatives to build just communities across the United States.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Alexander served as the director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, shaping Ford’s grantmaking vision in arts and culture, journalism, and documentary film. During that time, she co-designed the Art for Justice Fund, an initiative that uses art and advocacy to address the crisis of mass incarceration.
Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Yale University—where she taught for over 15 years and helped rebuild and chaired the African American Studies Department—and Columbia University. An author or co-author of fifteen books, Dr. Alexander was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: for poetry with American Sublime and for biography with her 2015 memoir, the New York Times best-seller The Light of the World. In 2009, she composed and delivered the poem "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Her latest book, released in 2022, is The Trayvon Generation.
Dr. Alexander holds a BA from Yale University, an MA from Boston University, and a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the Pulitzer Prize, and is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, she received the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University. Among her many other honors, she has been recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.