Cecilia Ann Conrad

Cecilia Conrad is founding CEO of Lever for Change, a nonprofit that connects transformative ideas with the funding to make them reality. In just six years, she's helped channel over $2.5 billion to bold solutions tackling the world's most urgent challenges.

Before launching Lever for Change, Conrad served as Managing Director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where she led the MacArthur Fellows program and spearheaded the creation of 100&Change—a pioneering competition that awards a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time.

Conrad spent two decades at Pomona College, where she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Stedman Sumner Professor of Economics. She is now professor emerita of economics.

Her board leadership spans finance, philanthropy, and economic policy. Conrad chairs the TIAA Board of Governors and co-chairs the board of Giving Tuesday. She also serves on the boards of The Hypothesis Fund, IES Global, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the African Center for Economic Transformation. She is a trustee emerita of Bryn Mawr College, Muhlenberg College, and the Poetry Foundation.

A past president of both the National Economic Association and the International Association for Feminist Economics, Conrad brings decades of expertise in economic equity and innovative philanthropy to her work.

She received her B.A. from Wellesley College, where she received its Alumnae Achievement Award in 2023, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Conrad was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024.