‘Hope Is the Oxygen of Democracy.’ Darren Walker Looks Toward the Future

"Hope is the oxygen of democracy," says the outgoing president of the Ford Foundation

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

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

As for his future endeavors, he says he has no plan. “I think it’s important to have clarity about what you don’t want to do,” he says. So far he has crossed university president and running for public office off his list. He’s mostly focused on the next 15 months and smoothly moving one America’s biggest money-givers into its next era. He spoke to TIME in the foundation board members’ meeting room the day after he announced his departure.

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

If you are a philanthropy committed to the idea that democracy is the best form of government, and that the full participation of the citizenry is essential for democracies to be healthy, 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 increasing numbers of people who feel left out and left behind, disaffected and disillusioned and therefore hopeless? Hopeless people will do things that we thought were never possible in our society. That worries me.

Americans have begun to realize that the inequity is baked into the system. It’s structural inequity, which is very hard to root out without destroying the structure. Can you point to a program that has begun to reform rather than destroy?

I am a reformer, not a destroyer. I’m a believer that capitalism is the best way to organize an economy, but I’m not naive. The kind of capitalism we have now does not generate shared prosperity. People like me benefit more from the current system. We have supported over the years research and policy development on asset building strategies. I’ll give you an example: Baby bonds, a way of setting aside money, early in life of a newborn that over the years accretes in value. That is a mechanism to address inequality, because it allows, at some point in adulthood, for an amount of capital that can make possible a college education, or a downpayment on a home, or the start of a small business. There are three things that we need to fund a program: an institution, a forceful, terrific individual at the helm, and a powerful idea, an idea that might be marginal, but our support can help move it to the mainstream. Our early support, for example, of Muhammad Yunus when he was an unknown economics professor in Bangladesh, who brought an idea for macro credit to rural women, a marginal idea in the 1970s that now is a part of World Bank policy.

People who push back against the notion that income inequality is a bad thing often say billionaires have the scope to take the big swings. And if you don’t have these risk takers, you don’t have progress. How would you answer that?

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

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

The things that I consider problematic for philanthropy are not the grants, but how we invest the billions in our investment portfolios. In our case, as we reflected on our own behaviors, we learned some startling 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 does one reconcile that? How does one reconcile being a public-health foundation, seeking to improve the health of people in low-income communities, and then be a significant investor in the largest polluter in those communities? These are the paradoxes that I believe are the most challenging: how we do our best to ensure that we’re not doing harm with the money we’re investing?

I know that you’d hoped for New York City’s notorious Rikers Island prison to be closed. It remains open. Why is it so difficult?

I served on the Commission on the Future of Rikers Island. And among the recommendations was absolutely that Rikers had to be closed as soon as possible and that there needed to be small facilities in other parts of the city. The challenge is, we have some advocates who are abolitionists who want no prisons. And we have citizens who don’t want facilities in their community. It’s very frustrating. It is not because there is no momentum to close Rikers. It’s that we do need in this city a minimum number of decent beds where people can be treated with dignity.

You’ve been the recipient of a lot of criticism from the abolitionists, including from former Ford fellows who protested against you outside this building? Did that smart?

I was profoundly wounded, emotionally, very, very wounded by the protesters, and by disapproval of some of my own staff. But one of the things you learn about leadership is that you have to be guided by values and principles and the framework to navigate really complex challenges. And that was one such occasion. In my personal life, I had just lost my partner [David Beitzel]. It was wrenching. There’s no other way to describe it. But I don’t regret the decision I made.

While you have been at Ford, we have seen the rise of several prominent female philanthropists. Are they different?

The most exciting philanthropy underway 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 aren’t interested in controlling their grantees. So much of philanthropy has been about controlling our grantees, directing them to do what we want them to do and be accountable for our investments. These women are taking a different tack where they say, “We want to support institutions.”

Are there any big moonshot projects you wish that you started earlier?

I wish I had started earlier on the question of philanthropy and AI. We have a working group–a group of foundations have come together recently. I wish we had started that earlier and developed a framework for how AI could help us with our grant-making, to improve and bring efficiency. And to think about what are the implications for philanthropy? What are the implications for our grantees, most of whom do not have the resources or time to explore that question?

When you are the head of an organization like this, how does it affect your personal relationships?

There is no doubt that when you become a foundation president, you breathe rarefied air, you never have a bad meal. When you’re the president of the Ford Foundation, people go out of their way to be deferential, to extend amazing kindness, because most people want something from it. So there are many people with whom I engage in a very transactional way. I’ll be able to move on, after I leave Ford, with joy and happiness and confidence that I’m an OK person. But I will absolutely 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 seek ways to influence thought about policy and technology that ensures that we get the very best of technology while mitigating the harm. I believe that technology is going to be the intermediating force in our society for opportunity. And we cannot have the bias, discrimination, and unfairness that existed in the analog world to simply be transferred to the digital realm. It will only exacerbate inequality.