Cecilia Ann Conrad

Cecilia A. Conrad, Ph.D. is a Senior Advisor at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and CEO of Lever for Change, a nonprofit that helps donors find high impact philanthropic opportunities. She was formerly a Managing Director at the MacArthur Foundation, where she led the MacArthur Fellows program and steered the cross-Foundation team that created MacArthur’s 100&Change—an athematic, open call competition that periodically makes a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time.

Before joining the MacArthur Foundation in January 2013, Conrad had a distinguished career as both a professor and an administrator at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. She held the Stedman Sumner Chair in Economics and is currently a Professor of Economics, Emerita. Conrad's academic research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status. Her work has appeared in both academic journals and nonacademic publications including The American Prospect and Black Enterprise. Before joining the faculty at Pomona College, Conrad served on the faculties of Barnard College and Duke University.

She was also an economist at the Federal Trade Commission and a visiting scholar at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Conrad currently serves on the boards of Giving Tuesday, the African Center for Economic Transformation, the Hypothesis Fund LLC, IES Global (a.k.a. IES Study Abroad) and the National Academy of Social Insurance; is a member of the TIAA Board of Governors and of the 2021-2023 Generosity Commission; and is trustee emerita at Bryn Mawr College and Muhlenberg College. Conrad received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.