Cecilia Conrad

Cecilia Ann Conrad (born 4 January 1955) is the CEO of Lever for Change and a Managing Director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Lever for Change is a nonprofit MacArthur Foundation affiliate, whose mission is to unlock significant philanthropic capital and accelerate positive social change around the world’s biggest challenges. In addition to her role at Lever for Change, Dr. Conrad oversees the MacArthur Fellows program and MacArthur’s 100&Change, the Foundation’s competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time.

Before joining the Foundation in January 2013, Conrad had a distinguished career as both a professor and an administrator at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. She held the Stedman Sumner Chair in Economics and is currently an emerita professor of economics. She served as Associate Dean of the College (2004-2007), as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College (2009-2012), and as Acting President (Fall 2012). From 2007-2009, she was interim Vice President and Dean of the Faculty at Scripps College.  

As Associate Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Pomona, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Pomona, Conrad championed the College's summer undergraduate research program and expanded it to the arts and humanities, led conversations regarding the value and assessment of a liberal arts college education, nurtured collaborations between the arts and the sciences, and worked with academic departments to improve the campus climate for diversity.

As a member of the faculty, Conrad contributed to the curriculum of several interdisciplinary programs and, in 2002, was recognized as California's Carnegie Professor of the Year, a prestigious national award that recognizes faculty members for their achievement as undergraduate professors. Conrad's academic research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status. Her work has appeared in both academic journals and nonacademic publications including The American Prospect and Black Enterprise.

Before joining the faculty at Pomona College, Conrad served on the faculties of Barnard College and Duke University.  She was also an economist at the Federal Trade Commission and a visiting scholar at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

From 2008 to 2009, she was the president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), she is also a former president of the National Economic Association, and a former board member of the American Economic Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP).

Dr. Conrad is a member of the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College, the Poetry Foundation, the National Academy of Social Insurance, IES, and the Sylvia Bozeman and Rhonda Hughes EDGE Foundation.  She is a Trustee Emerita of Muhlenberg College.

Cecilia Ann Conrad was born on 4 January 1955, St. Louis, Missouri. A year after Cecilia was born, her father, Dr. Emmett James Conrad, became the first African-American surgeon to join the staff of St. Paul’s Hospital, Dallas, Texas (now St. Paul University Hospital, University of Texas Southwestern). He was appointed to the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) by Governor Mark White in 1984, the first African American elected to a citywide office in Dallas. His wife, Cecilia's mother, Eleanor Nelson, acted as his campaign manager when he ran for office. Cecilia was their only child.

From 1976 to 1981 she participated in an affirmative action scheme, the Bell Laboratories Cooperative Research program.

Conrad gained her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College (1976) and went on to receive a masters and a doctorate, both from Stanford University (her doctorate, in 1982, specialized in labor economics, industrial organization, and public finance).

• From the end of her studies, until 1981 lecturer, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
• 1976 - 1981: economist, Economic Evidence Division, Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission
• 1981 - 1985: assistant professor of economics, Duke University
• 1985 - 1995: Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, New York
• 1995 - 2004: professor, Pomona College, Claremont, California
• 2004 - 2007: associate dean, Pomona College
• 1998 - 2005: director (founding director), of the American Economic Association’s (AEA’s) Committee on the Status Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP)’s'Pipeline Mentoring Program'
• 2007 - 2009: vice president and dean of faculty, Scripps College, Claremont, California
• 2009 - 2012: vice president and dean, Pomona College
• Fall 2012: acting president, Pomona College
• 2009 - 2012: program advisor, Active Living Research (an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
• 2005 - present: member of the board of trustees of Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania
• 2013 - present: managing director, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• 2019 - present: CEO, Lever for Change

• 2002 California's Carnegie Professor of the Year
• 2002 Wig Distinguished Professorship Award for Excellence in Teaching (from Pomona College)
• 2005 Outstanding Academic Title of 2005 for African Americans in the U.S. Economy, which she co-edited, awarded by Choice Magazine
• 2008 Woman of Power Award at the 2008 annual conference of the National Urban League
• 2015 Lewis-Oaxaca Distinguished Lecturer at the American Economic Association Summer Mentoring Pipeline Conference
• 2018 Samuel Z. Westerfield Award (from the National Economic Association)

Books

• Conrad, Cecilia A (2004). Building skills for black workers: preparing for the future labor market. Washington, D.C. Lanham, Maryland: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies University Press of America. ISBN 9780761827795.
• Conrad, Cecilia A; Whitehead, John; Mason, Patrick; Stewart, James (2005). African Americans in the U.S. economy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742543782.

Journal articles

• Conrad, Cecilia A; Doss, Cheryl R. (2008). "The AIDS epidemic: challenges for feminist economics". Feminist Economics. 14 (3): 1–18. doi:10.1080/13545700802262998.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Conrad, Cecilia A (September 16, 2013). “Our Society Discourages Innovation,” Op-Ed, Room for Debate, The New York Times.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (September 20, 2013). “Five Myths About the MacArthur ‘Genius Grants’,” The Washington Post.
• Conrad, Cecilia A; Dixson, Adrienne; Sloan Green, Clementine "Tina" (2014). “A Discussion on Gender Equity and Women of Color,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol 35, #3: pp 3-14.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (Fall 2014). "Finding the right match" (PDF). CSWEP Newsletter: 5–8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-13.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Conrad, Cecilia A (September 3, 2014). “The Geography of Genius: New Data About MacArthur Fellows Shows That Creative People Move More,” Time.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (May 28, 2015). “Does Alma Mater Really Matter? Where MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellows Went to College,” The Huffington Post.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (September 26, 2017).“Giving Away $100 Million: A Peek behind the Curtain at MacArthur Foundation,” Nonprofit Quarterly.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (2018). “How to Mobilize Philanthropy to Advance Racial Equity? A Call to Action,” The Review of Black Political Economy, Vol. 45, #2: pp 95-103.
• Conrad, Cecilia A (August 6, 2019). "Big Grant, Big Learnings,” India Development Review. 
• Conrad, Cecilia A; Simms, Margaret (2019). “Diversity in the Dismal Science: the Stanford Experience,” The Review of Black Political Economy. 

Chapters in books

• Conrad, Cecilia A (1999), "Affirmative action and admission to the University of California",in Ong, Paul (ed.), Impacts of affirmative action: policies and consequences in California, Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, pp. 171–196, ISBN 9780761990550
• Conrad, Cecilia A (2018). “Feminist Economics: Second Wave, Tidal Wave, or Barely a Ripple?” Chapter in edited volume The Legacy of 2nd Wave Feminism in American Politics, edited by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields, Palgrave MacMillan.

Research papers

• Conrad, Cecilia A; Bloom, David E; Miller, Cynthia K (1996). Child support and fathers' remarriage and fertility. Cambridge Mass: Volume 5781 of National Bureau of Economic Research NBER working paper series (original from: University of Michigan).

Speeches (selected)

• Is there a bubble in the liberal arts college market? (transcription), Pomona College Vice President and Dean of the College, Cecilia Conrad, speech at the 1 September 2009 Convocation.
• “How to Give Away $100 Million” (A Fireside Chat with Dr. Cecilia Conrad), Center for High Impact Philanthropy, Oct 27, 2016.
• “Philanthropy, Legitimacy and Voice: Here and Abroad,” Global Philanthropy Forum, Washington, DC April 19, 2017.
• “Explaining the MacArthur Fellowship Program,” MIT Media Lab, May 29, 2018. 
• “Philanthropy and Civil Society: Knowledge Marketplace,” Global Philanthropy Forum, Redwood City, CA, April 3, 2019.
• “Asian Venture Philanthropy Network: Keynote,” Singapore, June 29, 2019.

Media Interviews (selected)

• Interview with Denver Fredrick, The Business of Giving, August 12, 2016.
• Interview with Audrey Elkus, October 9, 2017.
• Interview with Dan Loney, Wharton Business Radio, December 21, 2017.

• Interview with Priss Benbow, Stanford Social Innovation Review podcast, “MacArthur Foundation Program Leader Reflects on Lessons From 100&Change Grant Competition” April 23, 2019.