Franklin Augustine Thomas

Mr. Franklin A. Thomas has been a consultant at the Study Group since 1996. Formerly, Thomas served as an attorney for the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency and then as assistant U.S. attorney in New York from 1964 to 1965. In 1967 New York Senator Robert Kennedy appointed Thomas president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a redevelopment group that was headquartered in Thomas’ boyhood neighborhood. It became the national model for community-based redevelopment efforts. In 1977, Thomas worked for two years in private practice until he was asked by the Rockefeller Foundation to head a study of apartheid, which became the Study Commission on United States Policy Toward Southern Africa. After completion of the year-long study, Thomas was appointed president of the Ford Foundation. At the time he took over the organization, it was suffering from financial difficulties with reduced assets and a lack of focus. Thomas conducted a comprehensive review and announced drastic changes in 1981 that included staff and programming cuts, a move that drew criticism internally and externally. However by 1990 Thomas had increased the fund’s endowment significantly and had shifted focus toward issues relating to urban poverty. Under his leadership, the foundation also funded human rights organizations and anti-apartheid initiatives. In 1996 Thomas retired from the Ford Foundation and has served on the boards of directors for major companies like Citicorp and PepsiCo. Thomas received Columbia University's Alexander Hamilton Medal in 1983 and the Columbia Law School's James Kent Award in 1992.