JUDITH RODIN
President, The Rockefeller Foundation

No problem is insurmountable, no issue too complex for Judith Rodin to tackle in her signature way—with intelligence, innovation, and passion. As president of the Rockefeller Foundation since 2005, Rodin works tirelessly to ameliorate social inequities and human suffering around the world. She is the first woman to serve as the foundation’s president in its 95-year history, a glass ceiling she shattered after serving as the first female president of an Ivy League institution. A great thinker, but more importantly a great doer, Judith Rodin orchestrates profound transformations for institutions, communities, and individuals most in need.

A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rodin graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University. A research psychologist who helped pioneer the behavioral medicine movement, Rodin was awarded some 20 research grants totaling nearly $30 million in the two decades she served on the faculty of Yale University before becoming its provost. A large part of her research focused on obesity, body image, and eating disorders in women.

In 1994 Rodin was named the seventh president of her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first woman to lead an Ivy League institution. Her legacy at Penn is one of unprecedented growth and progress. During the decade of her leadership, the institution doubled its research funding, tripled both its annual fundraising and the size of its endowment, attracted record numbers of undergraduate applicants, and climbed from 16th to 4th in the national rankings.

Perhaps Rodin’s most celebrated accomplishment at Penn was the comprehensive, award-winning neighborhood revitalization program she implemented in West Philadelphia and University City. Instead of building barriers to separate the university from the surrounding community, Rodin engineered an urban revitalization that now stands as a national model for town-gown partnership. Her recent book, The University & Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), chronicles the challenges and successes of this landmark endeavor.

When Rodin joined the Rockefeller Foundation, her task shifted but not her tenacity. Since its 1913 inception, the foundation has given more than $14 billion in current dollars to thousands of grantees worldwide. In just her first three years at the helm, Rodin recalibrated the foundation’s focus for the 21st century, launching major initiatives to strengthen global health systems, mobilize an agricultural revolution in Africa, rebuild New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, strengthen the economic security of working families, and encourage sustainable transportation policies in the United States. Her overall agenda for the foundation is characterized by smart globalization—maximizing access to opportunities unleashed by globalization while minimizing negative consequences resulting from it—“for more people, more fully, in more places around the world.”

The recipient of 14 honorary doctoral degrees, Rodin also is the author of more than 200 academic articles and chapters and has written or co-written 12 books. She served on President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, is a member of myriad academic societies, and is a board member for several nonprofit and corporate sector institutions. She is married to Paul Verkuil, past president of the College of William and Mary, former chief executive officer of the American Automobile Association, and interim dean of the University of Miami School of Law. They have three children.

Through her many roles—as a research scientist, an academician, and a philanthropist—Rodin’s impact on this world has been nothing short of transformational. For her devotion to improving the human condition and the ingenuity with which she meets every challenge, we honor Judith Rodin today.