People who read Larry Kramer’s kick-off blog post probably got the sense from his lively prose that he’s an interesting fellow. They’re right. In order to give you a better idea of what the Hewlett Foundation’s (relatively) new president is really like, I sat down with him for an interview. It ended up revealing how he has approached the challenge of taking over a successful foundation while adding his own creativity and intellect. Thankfully, it also proved to be a pretty lively and freewheeling discussion.

We’ve broken the interview up into a couple short pieces organized by subjects, and we'll share the full interview in the new year. The reason is twofold – 1) who has time to watch a long video with the holidays upon us? and 2) it gives us more opportunities for blog posts (NB: Here the author inserted a smiley-face emoticon. It has been removed. -ed.)!

In this first installment, Larry talks about his initial thoughts on the Foundation’s exploration into grantmaking designed to reduce political polarization.