“Foundations” is a series of informal question-and-answer sessions with employees of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to give them an opportunity to explain their work. Joe Ryan is a program officer and the managing director for Latin America in the Foundation’s Environment Program. In this position he coordinates all the Foundation’s air quality …

We may live in a global village, but most people’s knowledge of other cultures remains woefully slight. With commercial media more interested in selling products than in informing citizens, realistic depictions of life elsewhere can be surprisingly scarce. Clearly, in the post-9/11 world, such failures of understanding can have catastrophic consequences. It is to address …

Barry Hessenius was worried about leadership. More specifically, as the former head of the California Arts Council, he was worried about where the next generation of leaders in arts organizations would come from. With baby boomers retiring and fewer workers in the succeeding generation, Hessenius foresaw a fight to recruit new leadership that often-cash-strapped arts …

The Association of Black Foundation Executives has selected Danielle Deane, a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to be one of ten foundation officers in the nation to participate in its annual leadership program. The yearlong Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program is designed to strengthen the leadership skills of foundation staff, donors, and …

For a broad and deep look at the work being done to protect the environment of the American West, you can’t do better than the web site of the Foundation-supported Wyoming Outdoor Council. Now in its fortieth year, the Council is Wyoming’s largest statewide conservation organization and its leading advocate for natural resources conservation and …

“Foundations” is an occasional series of informal question and answers sessions with employees of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to give them an opportunity to explain their work. Catherine Casserly is a program officer who directs the Foundation’s work to make educational materials freely available on line. The open educational resources movement, as this …

Let’s start with a quiz.    Since the 1990s the rate of teen pregnancy in the United States has:A. declined by about a third.B. stayed about the same.C. increased by a third. The group of unmarried women in the U.S. most likely to have used an effective method of contraception the last time they had …

Non-profit organizations that receive money from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation say they value the Foundation’s impact on the fields in which they work, but wish its application process were easier and its staff more available. Those are among the key findings of a survey of more than 500 Hewlett Foundation grantees that the …

What do you do if you are at risk for an accidental pregnancy? If you have access to the Internet, probably one of the first things is to go online to learn more. What are your choices? Who—and what—can help? It is for this rapid assistance that the Emergency Contraception Website was created more than …

Association of American Universities President Robert Berdahl says a recent lunch with a vice president from the University of Minnesota was typical. Whenever two or more leaders concerned with the country’s major public universities gather, it seems inevitable that the discussion will turn to their uphill fight with the nation’s top private universities to hire …