Domestic-Policy Expert Tapped as New Education Director

After 28 years of living in Washington, Barbara Chow moved this fall back to her native state, California, to become education director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in Menlo Park. She uprooted her life and a career largely spent in the federal government to concentrate instead on some of the most complex problems facing philanthropy. What’s more, she knows she’ll be out of a job in eight years — the timetable the foundation allots to all its grant makers so that new people will constantly join the staff to introduce new ideas.

“I’ve known for some time I had a hankering to be in philanthropy,” says Ms. Chow. “My work before was at 30,000 feet. It was really interesting stuff, but in philanthropy you have a chance to see what you were thinking about put into action.”

Ms. Chow, 52, will have significant resources at her disposal. With $9.3-billion in assets, the Hewlett foundation is the country’s fourth-wealthiest. It awarded $51.5-million in grants to improve education last year and focuses on state, national, and international issues, including overhauling California’s elementaryand secondary-school system and making college course work accessible for free on the Internet. “There is a hugely rich base to start with and kind of figure out where does it all go next,” says Ms. Chow of the foundation’s efforts.

She declined to reveal her salary in her new job, which she started this month. Her predecessor, Marshall Smith, earned $242,087 in 2006, according to the group’s most recently available informational tax return.

Ms. Chow, a domestic-policy expert, has spent much of her career figuring out how to spend the least amount of the government’s money to net the greatest social gain, a skill she says will help her succeed in her new venture. “All my life I have been focused on the nexus between money and social change,” she says. “Understanding budgets and how they work, making choices, and achieving goals at the lowest price are the same skills you need in philanthropy.”

Hewlett officials, who considered hiring a school superintendent for the position, agreed.

“If you look at the role that setting budgets and budget priorities and how budgets are allocated plays in California state education, until we get that right and the way in which school districts and community colleges are funded, we are not going to really achieve significant education reform,” says Paul Brest, the foundation’s president, who hired Ms. Chow. (To read an opinion article co-written by Mr. Brest, see The Chronicle, November 13.)

Ms. Chow also comes to the job with some grant-making experience, albeit on a much smaller scale than Hewlett’s operations. After working in both terms of the Clinton White House, she joined the National Geographic Education Foundation, in Washington, where as its executive director she helped distribute roughly $5-million annually to improve the public’s knowledge of geography.

On her watch, the foundation, in concert with other organizations, produced a public-awareness campaign called “My Wonderful World” and focused on training elementaryand secondary-school teachers in geography.

Ms. Chow also joined the board of Grantmakers for Education, a group in Portland, Ore., that includes 200 foundations, corporate-giving programs, and wealthy individuals, eventually serving as its chairwoman.

She hopes to tap into that group for advice. “One of the first things I am going to do at Hewlett is to go back and talk to everyone I met at Grantmakers for Education who has ever done this successfully and see how they are approaching this and where they see the opportunities,” she says.

In an interview, Ms. Chow spoke about her new job and why a Democratic White House couldn’t lure her back to Washington:

Have you always been interested in education issues?

It became interesting when my kids — now 21 and 18 — were in school. I was like a lot of “helicopter” parents, very involved with their education.

What appeals to you about working at a foundation?

If you’re working on a budget at the White House, it can take two to three years for a program to become funded. Foundations are more nimble than that. They are able to move relatively quickly on opportunities as they see them. Foundations can also be more single-minded. They can focus on a goal — for example, eradicating polio — and take their resources to move toward it. Government obviously has a lot of other things it’s trying to do.

How will your past job experiences help you succeed at the foundation?

The most important thing I learned over many years working in the policy world is how to focus and not get distracted. For example, one of the goals in the Clinton administration was to reduce class sizes, but people were constantly trying to add things to the program, such as professional development. But if we didn’t isolate the effort on class size, how would we know if it worked to improve student achievement? It’s really easy to do lots of things and [see] a thousand flowers bloom, but not know the reason why.

What do you hope to accomplish?

Hewlett and some other foundations just put out a report detailing directions the state legislature should take to enact education reform. To get some of the ideas enacted into law would be a tremendous accomplishment. For example, something they thought was worthy was putting data systems in place. Now that sounds really dull, but it’s incredibly important because it becomes the backbone for many other things. It’s providing information about kids’ learning that teachers can use to help their students perform better.

What else is on the agenda?

Taking the open-education program to the next level. Hewlett has had a huge role in helping put university classes online for free. Anyone can take a course; my son took a calculus class offered by [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. It’s well past a good idea and it’s started to become a movement. It has applicability in many different spheres.

Would you be tempted to work in another Democratic White House?

I spent eight years in the White House and it was one of the most interesting experiences in my life. But I was there every single day, I worked all the time. Being in the White House is something I have done and I’m anxious to do something else.

How do you feel about the foundation’s term limits?

I feel it’s liberating because you have a very clear time frame. It’s enough time to be able to do something. But it’s really important to be conscious of what has gone on before you, so you are not just changing things every eight years: That would be difficult for the grantees and also the foundation.

You have an almost higher responsibility to see what has gone on before and be very clear about how to build upon what is out there.