Chris Cardona

Chris Cardona programs the Philanthropy portfolio and serves on the BUILD team at the Ford Foundation in New York City. As senior program officer, he is responsible for designing and implementing a grantmaking strategy to build an enduring capacity to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion with an intersectional lens in U.S. philanthropy. As part of the BUILD team, he supports other grantmakers at the foundation in providing organizational strengthening support to their grantee partners, and advises internally on philanthropic engagement. 

Chris serves on the boards of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, whose mission is to relentlessly pursue equity for all Arkansans, and Red Hook Initiative, a youth-serving agency in Brooklyn that believes that social change to overcome systemic inequities begins with empowered youth.

Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, he led the philanthropy consulting practice at TCC Group and served as program director for the Northeast region at Hispanics in Philanthropy. He holds a Ph.D in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in political science from Williams College, where he met his wife, an arts fundraiser. They live in Queens with an increasingly unmanageable collection of stringed instruments.