New Leader With Close Ties to Heinz Family Has History of Fearlessness

After Grant Oliphant was skipped over seven years ago to lead the Heinz Endowments, he will return to the fold this month as the new president of the $1.47-billion family fund.

Mr. Oliphant has been at the Heinz family’s side for years. First he served as press secretary for the late Sen. John Heinz, before the lawmaker and six others died in a plane crash in 1991. Later, Mr. Oliphant moved from Capitol Hill to Pittsburgh to work as a top lieutenant at the foundation, which largely supports projects to promote the arts, lift the city’s economy, improve the lives of children, and protect the environment.

The snub from the Heinz board last time hurt.

“I was crushed,” he says.

But in the long run, the rejection helped his career, he says. It propelled him onto the public stage as president of the Pittsburgh Foundation, a community fund where he has attracted new donors; helped strengthen ties among the city’s grant makers, its public schools, and the mayor’s office; and helped increase the value of the foundation’s assets, from the prerecession peak of $785-million in 2007 to more than $1-billion last year.

What leaving Heinz “freed me to do,” he says, “was confront what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. “If I wanted to lead an organization, I had to go do it.”

Oil and Gas

Mr. Oliphant will replace Robert Vagt, an outsider pick that caused some to question the Heinz family’s commitment to the environment.

Mr. Vagt, who has served in management and board positions of several energy companies, including the natural-gas pipeline firm Kinder Morgan, has since been picked to serve as chairman of the board of directors of gas driller Rice Energy. While at Heinz, he created a study panel that included members of the oil and gas industry to develop standards for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a controversial method for extracting oil and gas from the ground.

Members of the Heinz family, including its chairman, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who is married to Secretary of State John Kerry, and her son Andre Heinz, a board member, have put considerable resources behind green-energy efforts.

Ms. Heinz Kerry, who was hospitalized last summer and maintains a sparse public schedule, was unavailable to comment according to a spokesman, and Andre Heinz did not return calls. (Mr. Vagt announced his retirement last October.)

Western Pennsylvania, which has struggled to regain the vitality of its days as a steel powerhouse, stands to gain economically through extraction of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. As the foundation helps lead Pittsburgh’s philanthropic efforts to help the region’s economy, Mr. Oliphant says the Heinz Endowments will continue to study whether it is possible to “get it right” and protect the environment during the fracking process.

“The charge going forward is to continue that balance,” he says, without elaborating. “I will be led in this by my conversations with the family.”

Creating ‘Talent City’

Mr. Oliphant is perfect for the job to lead Heinz because the Heinz family trusts him, according to Frederick Thieman, president of the Buhl Foundation in Pittsburgh and former member of the Heinz Foundation board.

“The Heinz foundation is entering a period of time when there will be a transition from one generation to the next,” he says. “Because Grant knows the family well and knows the community well, he’s a great choice.”

Mr. Thieman suggested that if Mr. Oliphant had lived in Pennsylvania in the colonial era, he would have been a good wilderness guide, using his ability to pick up on small footprints and interpret clues.

Those same skills, he said, have helped Mr. Oliphant develop better relationships with donors and investigate their desires. And his willingness to stake out new ground helped him start a program called “Talent City” with Pittsburgh’s newly elected mayor, Bill Peduto. The foundation spent $275,000 on an online job portal for all applicants to high-level city jobs and developed a process for candidates to be vetted by independent panels.

When the website was started, some of Mr. Peduto’s political allies throughout the city were aghast that they would not be getting patronage jobs, says Kevin Acklin, the mayor’s chief of staff.

“We were blown away and pleased that Grant would be willing to wade into the politics of the city,” he says. “He showed a lot of courage.”

Remaining involved in thorny civic debates will be essential in his new job, Mr. Oliphant says, and timing is crucial. Many issues in Pittsburgh are at a “make or break” moment, he says, including the debate over fracking, the future of public schools, and the shape of economic development in the city. Mr. Oliphant says the Heinz Endowments will count on him to be a forceful voice.

“What they’re not looking for me to do is come in and do strategic planning,” he says. “This is an action-oriented group, and I have a bias toward action.”