Robots. The gig economy. Artificial intelligence. Youth unemployment. Demography, open borders, schooling based on last century’s needs, and universal basic income. If I had you at “robots,” then you might be one of the thousands of people in think tanks, international agencies, global consulting firms, private foundations, and tech giants focusing your intellectual energies on …
Three times a year, Hewlett Foundation staff gather for “in-town learning weeks” — rare blocks of time when all staff refrain from travel, staying in town to attend talks and workshops that promote learning and connection across the foundation. In a recent in-town week, we explored the themes of listening and feedback. It was inspired, …
Now that we know what the “good stuff” is when it comes to learning, how can we make sure that every student gets access to it in school? — Kent McGuire Since 1966, the Hewlett Foundation has made grants to improve educational opportunities for thousands of students in schools and universities across the United States. In…
John McGuirk completed his eight-year term as director of our Performing Arts Program in November 2017. He recently answered questions for an “exit interview” with arts blogger Barry Hessenius, on topics ranging from foundation collaboration and data gathering to what’s next for the field. Here is an excerpt; the full interview is available at Barry’s …
I’d love to say we saw what was coming when we launched the Cyber Initiative in 2014. But no one could have guessed how quickly cybersecurity would become what Berkeley’s Steve Weber calls “the master problem of the Internet era.” Yet the relentless stream of cybersecurity crises only highlights the gap we noticed four years …
Charmaine Jackson Mercer recently joined the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as an education program officer. She supports both our deeper learning portfolio of grantees and the program’s deep dive into equity. We spoke with Charmaine about her work at the foundation, and how she thinks we can make strong learning outcomes accessible to every …
The main goal of our Cyber Initiative is to build a more capable cyber policy field that works with the private sector, as well as government, to solve pressing challenges. As we reached the midpoint of our initial five-year funding commitment, we thought it was time to look at how we’re doing. With that in …
Cathy Casserly was an Education program officer and director of the OER Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation from 2001 to 2009. It was during this time that Hewlett, along with several other foundations, began to fund the nascent field of open educational resources (OER) — openly accessible, editable, downloadable curriculum resources for learners across the …
It has not been my usual practice to write annual letters—they feel at odds with the foundation’s commitment to “operating in the modest, low-key style of our founders.” But after a year as tumultuous and unsettling as 2017, a few words seem appropriate. Not to cheerlead or sound a clarion call to the barricades; everyone…
Our appearance—the sliver of ourselves that is most readily perceived by the outside world—can lend others to make assumptions, both consciously and unconsciously, about who we are and what we believe. And yet so much of who we are comes from the parts of ourselves that are not observable—our lived experiences, our histories. Each of …