Ford Foundation Chooses a Business Consultant as Its New President

In a surprising move, the Ford Foundation last week chose Luis A. Ubiñas, a business consultant with little background in grant making, to take over as its chief executive in 2008.

The choice of Mr. Ubiñas — a director at the San Francisco office of McKinsey & Company, the management-consulting company where he has worked for the past 18 years — raised many eyebrows, in part because people had expected Ford to select a high-profile figure from the nonprofit or political world.

“If I was going to bet the ranch, I would have bet it against Ford naming a McKinsey consultant as CEO,” says Phil Buchanan, executive director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, in Cambridge, Mass.

Most surprising was that Ford’s Board of Trustees chose a candidate with little experience managing a large foundation or charity.

“It’s not something that you learn how to do at Harvard Business School,” where Mr. Ubiñas earned a master’s degree, says William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington.

Mr. Ubiñas, however, says he is well prepared to take over the reins of the nation’s second-wealthiest foundation, with $12.9-billion in assets.

He says that, despite appearances to the contrary, there are many similarities between McKinsey and Ford.

“I come from a place whose bread and butter is innovation, and Ford applies innovation in a different sector, but the reality is it is as innovative-driven as where I come from,” says Mr. Ubiñas, who will earn $675,000 in his new role.

What’s more, while he has worked in the corporate world, he has volunteered on nonprofit boards in preparation for what he calls a “second career of doing work not just for myself but for the benefit of others.”

For instance, Mr. Ubiñas serves on the board of Leadership Education and Development, a Philadelphia organization that provides educational opportunities nationwide to Latino and black students from low-income families, and is a trustee of the United Way in San Francisco.

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At Ford, he replaces Susan V. Berresford, who announced last fall that she plans to retire in 2008. She has been head of the institution for 12 years. Ms. Berresford, unlike Mr. Ubiñas, had spent most of her career in grant making, including several decades employed by Ford.

Kathryn S. Fuller, chairwoman of the board, says the Ford trustees did not intentionally choose a new president from outside the foundation — or foundations in general — but sought “somebody who has a real knowledge and appreciation for social disparities and cultural differences.”

Mr. Ubiñas’s childhood growing up in the tough neighborhoods of the South Bronx means that such problems are not “abstractions” to him, she says.

Before Mr. Ubiñas was selected, outside observers of Ford had speculated that the fund would either pick an executive well entrenched in the nonprofit world, such as Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a Washington coalition, or a political leader with international cachet, such as former Democratic senator Bill Bradley or Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Despite this, some foundation watchers say that Mr. Ubiñas’s strategic-planning background may prove to be a boon for Ford.

“As foundations are being hard pressed to demonstrate impact and value, they are being asked to ratchet up their strategic vision. This is a response to that pressure,” says Jon Funabiki, who had spent 11 years as a deputy director of the Ford Foundation’s media, arts and culture unit before leaving in 2006 to become a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University.

“Will he bring more of a bottom-line approach to the world of philanthropy? That will be interesting to follow,” Mr. Funabiki says.

But such a corporate approach, especially in Mr. Ubiñas’s management style, could cause problems for a grant maker, which needs to appreciate the “messiness and the grittiness and reality of institutions,” says Mr. Schambra of the Bradley Center. “I just hope this isn’t another indication that we’re becoming more and more obsessed with efficiency over the purpose of the sector,” he says.

In His 40s

Aside from his professional background, Mr. Ubñas’s age also surprised some observers. At 44, he will be working in a world that is largely dominated by older faces.

“The real surprise about it is they actually picked someone in their 40s,” says Vincent Stehle, chairman of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers and a program officer at the Surdna Foundation. “At the outset, we heard that was one of the search criteria, but nobody believed it. The pressure could have been there to get someone with more gravitas, longer experience.”

Mr. Stehle added that Mr. Ubiñas’s consulting experience, which has been focused on helping media companies deal with a rapidly changing marketplace, will be crucial as he attempts to lead the Ford Foundation through similar changes.

“Philanthropy may be facing similar challenges in terms of accountability, in terms of the decentralization of power in decision making,”he says. “Understanding how to navigate that is going to be a great skill.”

Putting that skill to use in an institution as large as Ford will be a challenge, says Mr. Funabiki, who believes it will take Mr. Ubiñas some time to begin to put his stamp on the organization.

But despite those challenges, observers agree that the Ford Foundation has chosen someone who, on paper, has impressive talents. “They’ve obviously gone with someone who has good management skills — and great skills overall,” says Peter J. Frumkin, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “You have to have a certain amount on the ball to succeed at McKinsey. That place chews people up and spits them out with some regularity.”

For Mr. Ubiñas, who will officially join Ford in January, he says his first duty will be to meet with grant recipients and Ford staff members to better understand them and the institution.

After he moves his wife, a professor of human-sexuality studies at San Francisco State University, and two sons to the New York metropolitan area, he says, “the first thing I need to do is listen and learn.”