Former Ford Foundation executive Cyrus E. Driver is joining nonprofit Hartford Foundation for Public Giving as vice president for strategy and planning, effective Jan. 4, authorities say.
Driver was director of program learning and innovation at the private New York City nonprofit founded by automaker Henry Ford and son Edsel, whose assets of $17.6 billion give it a big voice in shaping the nation’s educational, social, civic and cultural programs and agendas..
At Hartford Foundation, he will lead research, strategy and planning, knowledge management and evaluation, as well as oversee collaborations with partners at the local, state and national levels.
Driver succeeds Chris Hall, who retired after 20 years at the Hartford Foundation.
Driver joined Ford in 1998 as a program officer focusing on education issues, and became deputy director of the educational opportunity and scholarship program in 2003. He assumed his role as director of program learning and innovation in February 2010.
Before joining Ford, he co-directed coalition-building and parent-organizing strategies at Designs for Change in Chicago, helping lead a reform movement to decentralize control of Chicago’s 600 public schools and give more power to boards of parents, school-level educators and community leaders, authorities say.
He has also was a policy analyst for California’s Oakland and Berkeley school districts, a researcher for the Accelerated Schools Project at Stanford University, and a community organizer and adult educator for several organizations in Chicago.
Driver holds a doctorate in the economics of education and a master’s degree in economics, both from Stanford University; a master’s in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s from the University of Chicago.
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving is the community foundation for the 29-town Greater Hartford region. It awarded grants in 2010 totaling more than $29 million – a record for the foundation.
