Cecilia Conrad

Cecilia Ann Conrad (born 4 January 1955)[1][2] 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.

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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),[3] she is also a former president of the National Economic Association,[4][5] and a former board member of the American Economic Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP).[6]

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.