Philanthropy Innovation Summit 2025 | Mainstage Program

John G. Palfrey is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies with assets of approximately $8 billion, and offices in Chicago, New Delhi, and Abuja, Nigeria. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2019, Palfrey served as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, the only school of its kind to maintain need-blind admissions. During his tenure from 2012 to 2019, the number of faculty members of color doubled, and the student body grew more diverse. He oversaw the creation of the Tang Institute at Andover, which seeks to reform and democratize excellent teaching and learning. Earlier, Palfrey was the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, where he served from 2003 to 2011. In that role, he expanded the Library’s reach and services, finding innovative ways to use digital technologies to enhance the school’s scholarship and teaching. From 2002 to 2008, Palfrey served as Executive Director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which seeks to explore and understand cyberspace. He is founding board chair of the Digital Public Library of America, and is the former board chair of LRNG, a nonprofit launched and supported by MacArthur. Palfrey has published extensively on how young people learn in a digital era, as well as the effects of new technologies on society at large. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. A revised and expanded version of his book Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, which he co-authored with Urs Gasser, was issued in 2016. Palfrey is the board chair of the United States Impact Investing Alliance and serves on the board of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation. He is the former board chair of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2021. He contributed an essay, “Design Choices for Libraries in the Digital-Plus Era,” to the Winter 2016 issue of Daedalus. Palfrey has taken part in two Academy events, the Forum on the Future of Higher Education on June 13, 2022, and Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education on May 7, 2019. 

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Peter Lattman is the managing director of media at Emerson Collective. He oversees Emerson’s investments and grants in media and journalism, which include The Atlantic, where he serves as vice chair and a member of its board of directors. He also serves on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists and American Journalism Project. 

Prior to joining Emerson, Peter worked as a journalist at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. 

Born in New York City, he grew up in Roslyn, on Long Island. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife, Isabel Gillies, and their three children.

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Karen Rundlet was named the CEO/Executive Director of the Institute for Nonprofit News in November 2023. The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a membership organization and network of 480 independent news outlets across North America. Under her leadership, INN distributed rapid response grant funding to local newsrooms providing essential information and reporting on the California wildfires. Rundlet previously served as Senior Director for the Knight Foundation’s journalism program, where she managed a $50 million portfolio. While at Knight, she secured investments for news innovators like Solutions Journalism Network, the Documenters program, NewsMatch and Outlier Media. In the first part of her career, Rundlet worked as a journalist at The Miami Herald, public media’s WLRN, and WNBC-TV. Rundlet was named to Nonprofit Times 2024 “Power and Influence” Top 50 list. She, her husband, Alex, and daughter live in Miami, where she grew up after her family emigrated from Jamaica.

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