Fair-Housing Advocate Hired to Head U.S. Unit of Open Society Foundations

New job: Kenneth H. Zimmerman, 52, will join the Open Society Foundations in July as head of U.S. programs.

Background: Mr. Zimmerman is a lawyer and former Obama administration official whose work has focused on preventing discriminatory housing practices. He was the first executive director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

Education: He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He also studied urban issues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Why he wanted the job: Mr. Zimmerman says he is excited to work on the civil-rights issues to which he’s devoted his career, with the “autonomy, resources, and vision that I think OSF has.”

New leadership: He starts at Open Society, which was founded by George Soros, in the same month as Christopher Stone, its new president. They met when Mr. Stone ran the Vera Institute of Justice. Mr. Zimmerman says Mr. Stone helped him better understand how grass-roots community involvement and other approaches that don’t involve lawsuits can help advance equality.

On grant making: Mr. Zimmerman says his experience at the New Jersey nonprofit taught him about the need for “humility” on the part of donors.

Salary: He declined to disclose it.

What he’s reading: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, as part of an all-male book group he’s participated in for nearly a decade. Next he plans to read The Passage of Power, Robert Caro’s latest book about Lyndon Johnson.

Hobbies: A Sunday-morning basketball group: “By hobby, I mean trying to avoid the orthopedist.”