Handing over leadership to a new generation, the $13 billion Hewlett Foundation has chosen astrophysicist and University of Southern California dean Amber Miller, 52, to be its new president.
Miller at the end of the summer will succeed 65-year-old Larry Kramer, Hewlett’s president from 2012 to 2023, and Elizabeth Peters, who became Hewlett’s interim president in January. Miller is the first scientist and the first woman in a permanent role to lead the foundation, which was created in 1966 by Hewlett-Packard co-founder William Hewlett and his wife, Flora.
Miller said in a statement that “the Hewlett Foundation is tackling the most important issues facing society — and the ones that I care about deeply.” She cited foundation work that ranges from “the climate emergency to improving the future of democratic and economic systems to supporting education and equity.”
In her previous leadership roles — as dean of arts and sciences at Columbia University and as dean of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at USC — Miller has shown a knack for settling into a new culture while also making her mark as an innovator.
Two years after joining USC, she launched Public Exchange, a new pathway for connecting academic experts to public- and private-sector efforts to tackle social and environmental problems. Pitching Public Exchange as the place where “urgency meets ingenuity,” Miller and her team fostered interdisciplinary solutions and streamlined approaches to matchmaking, contract negotiation, and project management.
In her new role at Hewlett, Miller “will build on the foundation’s long tradition of bringing intellectual rigor to our mission, while adding the insights of a cutting-edge scientist,” said the foundation’s board chair, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar. “Hewlett presidents are meant to be creative but also deliberative and collaborative,” he added.
During the Hewlett Foundation’s search for a new president, Miller “stood out for her executive leadership,” said board member Alecia DeCoudreaux, a former Mills College president, who chaired the board’s search committee. “She’s a good listener. She has the ability to come in, take what we have, and just make it stronger and better.”
“She has a deep commitment to strengthening our longstanding programs in areas such as the arts, education, environment, and reproductive health as well as newer work in areas such as racial justice,” DeCoudreaux added.
As the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific papers, Miller has focused on experimental work that helps detect traces of the universe’s origins. But, as Miller explained in a USC magazine interviewin 2016, “I was always looking for the next subject that I didn’t know about — that I couldn’t yet figure out.”
Even as a child growing up in Southern California’s Malibu mountains, curiosity was her guiding principle. “My parents were hippies,” Miller confided in a 2020 podcast. “I spent a ton of time outdoors. I think that led to a certain level of curiosity and inquisitiveness.”
That curiosity, over the years, led Miller to a seat on the Council of Foreign Relations. (She also became the chief science adviser to a New York City Police Department task force on counter-terrorism.) Even at USC, she made room in her deanship for learning moments such as helping to judge a student competition aimed at developing commercially viable sustainability solutions.
“There’s an energy and intensity about her that’s infectious,” Cuellar said. “She can get other people excited, and she can get teams energized.”
Being an early mover — rather than waiting for a wider consensus to form among leading foundations — has been a Hewlett hallmark for some time. During his tenure as Hewlett Foundation president, Larry Kramer led a bold push into climate-related funding, years before that became a mainstream priority at many other foundations.
The Hewlett Foundation also acted decisively after the George Floyd killing in May 2020, committing $170 million toward racial equity less than two months later.
The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
