What You Need to Know About the Barr Foundation’s New President

The Barr Foundation has selected Ali Noorani, the current director of the U.S. Democracy Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to become its next president.

In December, Noorani will replace Jim Canales, who has led the organization since 2014. This will be a significant transition for the Boston-based foundation, which was established by telecommunications billionaire Amos Barr Hostetter and his wife, Barbara Hostetter, in 1987. During Canales’s tenure, the organization’s endowment doubled from $1.8 billion in 2019 to about $2.8 billion, making it one of the 25 largest private foundations in the country. Noorani, a longtime nonprofit leader with extensive experience in public health and immigration, will soon take over management of those assets. Canales will transition to the role of board chair after Barbara Hostetter steps down from the role early next year.

Here are five things to know about Noorani:

1. Noorani joins the Barr Foundation after spending the past three years at the Hewlett Foundation overseeing its democracy program, which awards $40 million annually to efforts that aim to strengthen American democracy, reduce political polarization, and increase public trust in public institutions at the local, national, and global levels. During his tenure, Noorani was a member of the 2023-24 group of Democracy Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.

“At the foundation, Ali has been a collaborative leader and partner to me, and his steadfast focus on building a durable democracy that works for all, including across our differences, has been a hallmark of Hewlett’s philanthropic approach,” Amber Miller, president of the Hewlett Foundation, wrote in an email to democracy program grantees and shared with the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

2. Noorani’s earlier career focused heavily on public health and immigration. He served as president of the National Immigration Forum, a policy organization in Washington D.C., for 14 years, where he worked with leaders across the political spectrum. He also was executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights and assists with refugee resettlement. Additionally, he was director of public health for Codman Square Health Center and Dorchester House Multi-Service Center in Boston and director of the Greater Boston Urban Resources Partnership for Boston’s city environment department.

“His life’s work has been defined by service, and his values are deeply aligned with the values Amos and I hope will always define Barr — including humility, curiosity, and the long-term view that investing in potential and empowering people in communities always requires,” Barbara Hostetter said in a written statement.

3. Noorani has written two books that explore immigration from different perspectives — There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration and Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants. Noorani discussed the themes of Crossing Borders in a 2021 TEDx talk.

In a review of the There Goes the Neighborhood, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs praised Noorani for offering “the perspectives of law enforcement, business, and faith leaders who view immigrants as vital community members who fuel our economy and enrich our culture.” Noorani held a fellowship with Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective.

4. Noorani has a master of public health in environmental health and epidemiology/biostatistics from Boston University’s School of Public Health and dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and social welfare from the University of California at Berkeley. He serves as the chair of the board of directors for international nonprofit More in Common, which works to reduce political and social divisions. Noorani is a member of the board of advisers for the refugee resettlement group Welcome.US, and he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

5. He also has a Substack with more than 2,000 followers where he muses about fatherhood, philosophy, and politics, among other things. In a recent post, he discussed what he sees as the increasing rigidity of people’s ideological views.

“The world is getting awful brittle. We think what we think. If we are challenged to think differently, we break,” Noorani wrote. “At the same time, the world becomes less and less predictable. So in the face of uncertainty, we become more rigid, even more brittle. It is quite the doom loop.”