The Ford Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Kavita N. Ramdas as senior advisor to the president on global strategy, focusing on the foundation’s work in changing contexts around the world. Ramdas, who has served with distinction for the past three years as the foundation’s representative for India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, completed her tenure in New Delhi on October 1. Her new assignment in New York began this month.

In June, the foundation announced a new grantmaking program focused on addressing inequality and its many manifestations in the eleven regions where the foundation works. The new program emerged from an 18-month process involving foundation staff worldwide and drawing on input from thousands of grantee organizations and other leading institutions. The new program will take effect starting in January 2016.

With her deep experience working at national, regional, and global levels on issues ranging from philanthropy to international development and the rights of women and girls, Ramdas is well positioned to advise the foundation’s president, Darren Walker, as he leads the implementation of the new program in continuously evolving social and political environments around the world. Immediately prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Ramdas was at Stanford University, where she established the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Affairs. From 1996 to 2010, she served as president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, the world’s largest public foundation for women’s rights.

“Our priority is to ensure that our work and that of the organizations we support is tailored to each unique setting where we operate, responding meaningfully to local context and the many appearances of inequality,” Walker said. “Kavita’s distinguished career working with a broad array of actors on issues of gender, poverty, and social change will be invaluable as we build new partnerships and work in new ways with existing partners. She is a natural leader and consummate team-builder, and her insight and intellectual rigor will strengthen everything we do.”