Hewlett Foundation's outgoing chief reflects on social justice legacy

When Larry Kramer became president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation over a decade ago, the legal scholar decided to be like a sponge absorbing philanthropy information from his new colleagues. “The way I came into the job was I tried to learn and understand what was going on in the various programs, not with an agenda,” Kramer, now a leading advocate for climate and policy-focused philanthropy, told Devex. “It was more looking at all of the programs and understanding what they were about and seeing what made sense for them next,” he said. “And that was an evolutionary process.” For Kramer, that evolution is coming to an end. Next month, he will step down as head of the $13 billion, California-based foundation, which focuses its grantmaking on global climate change, along with strengthening governance and advancing gender equity. Kramer will become president and vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science next year. It’s a move that aligns with his background as a constitutional law scholar and former dean of Stanford University’s law school. His notable accomplishments prior to Hewlett include helping to create legal education projects in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Kurdistan, and East Timor. He also is a board member of Equal Justice Works, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit for lawyers seeking careers in public service. Still, the 65-year-old Kramer said it was at Hewlett that he did the most meaningful work of his life. “If I bomb entirely at the London School of Economics, I will still feel like I got 10 years here to do something that makes my life having been worth living,” he said during an interview with Devex. It wasn’t long before Kramer began to make his mark at Hewlett. Within two years of his arrival, he started two $150 million initiatives: One was a 10-year program to promote cybersecurity training and research. The other was the Madison Initiative Strategy to strengthen democracy in the United States at a time when political polarization was increasing. Kramer launched a third $150 million project in 2020 during the global racial reckoning that erupted after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in the U.S., when he spearheaded efforts to create a 10-year racial justice initiative. The foundation went on to hire Charmaine Jackson Mercer as its first chief equity and culture officer in 2021. Last month, the organization announced the formation of a racial justice advisory council to help the foundation identify funding opportunities. In addition to expanding Hewlett’s work to racial justice, Kramer “deepened” its commitments to environmental protection, women’s reproductive rights, and racial justice, among other areas. Over the past 11 years, he also has established himself as a luminary within the philanthropy sector. “He operates from a position of candor, frankness, and authenticity that is inspiring, and that is not always the case in philanthropy,” Ford Foundation President Darren Walker told The Chronicle of Philanthropy shortly after it was announced that Kramer would step down. Kramer’s climate legacy Climate philanthropy, in particular, is an area where Kramer has urged fellow funders to give more. Philanthropy can “play a pivotal role in creating the conditions for governments and business leaders, whose reach is greater, to act,” he said in a 2020 op-ed urging the sector to “stop fiddling while the world burns.” And he has been a champion for ClimateWorks Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that tracks global giving to climate change and also serves as a convenor for grantmakers and nonprofits focused on the cause. Hewlett was one of three U.S.-based foundations to launch ClimateWorks in 2008 with a five-year, $1 billion commitment alongside the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the McKnight Foundation. ClimateWorks was created under the premise that “governments were ready to do something about climate and they just needed technical assistance,” and a place to pool their funds, Kramer said. But then climate became a highly politicized issue for many countries. By the time that Kramer was appointed, ClimateWorks was struggling to adapt to that environment and was “sort of coming apart,” he said. One of his first priorities was to change ClimateWorks’ model so that instead of helping funders pool funding, it would focus on developing strategies for distributing philanthropic funding to climate efforts. Now Kramer is a ClimateWorks board member, and Hewlett Foundation supports the group’s work, which includes a recent report showing contributions to climate mitigation efforts have flatlined at a below 2% of annual global giving in total. “Larry has provided extraordinary leadership not only to ClimateWorks but also to the growing climate philanthropy community,” Helen Mountford, ClimateWorks’ president and CEO, said in a statement to Devex. “Larry has exemplified what’s possible when philanthropic leadership leans into tackling some of the biggest challenges facing people and the planet.” “It is not hyperbole to say that over the past 11 years, Larry has been one of the key driving forces behind making climate philanthropy the collaborative, impact-focused community it is, and ClimateWorks is enormously grateful to Larry for his unwavering commitment,” she added. Kramer is reluctant to take too much credit for Hewlett’s climate advocacy. The foundation was already among the world’s biggest climate funders when he joined in 2012, he noted. The Hewlett Foundation, which was started by American engineer and Hewlett-Packard Company co-founder Bill Hewlett and his wife Flora in 1966, was giving about $20 million annually to climate then, he said. In 2011, the foundation gave $21 million in climate grants, a spokesperson confirmed. However, that amount dramatically increased on Kramer’s watch. Hewlett gave $177 million to climate in 2022. Humble beginnings That effort to fund the fight against climate change is especially remarkable considering that as a kid growing up in the Chicago suburbs, one of Kramer’s first jobs was as a gas attendant. Kramer was just 14 years old pumping gas — people weren’t allowed to pump their own gas back then — washing windows and checking oil. It was a “great job,” he said. His gig just happened to coincide with the 1973 oil crisis. That crisis began when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries embargoed oil sales to the United States and other countries that supported Israel during the Arab-Israeli War. People waited in gas station lines for hours that year. Kramer acknowledges that beginning his professional life at a gas station and now working to support the global transition away from fossil fuels has been a remarkable journey. He’ll be too busy packing to attend this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP, which kicks off in Dubai on Nov. 30. But he is hopeful that the event will yield more discussion about implementing the climate commitments that governments have made in past years such as the landmark Inflation Reduction Act enacted in the U.S. last year, which promotes clean energy. Now that those pledges have been made, the focus must be on making sure they are implemented, he said. And philanthropy can play a big role in that process, according to Kramer. One of the things philanthropy can do is be nimble and flexible with climate investments that support government efforts and be willing to adapt their approaches to different contexts. In some countries such as China and India, there is a strong distrust of foreign organizations and foreign money, he said. Funders must learn how they can produce positive climate outcomes in such countries and that often means relying on local partners who have a better understanding of the situation on the ground, Kramer added. London calling Kramer will be watching developments within climate- and equity-focused philanthropy from a distant perch at the London School of Economics. And while he will miss the work that he has devoted many years of his life to at Hewlett, he said he’s looking forward to a fresh start and immersing himself in a new culture that he’s gotten to know from afar via television. “I’m a British police procedural fanatic, already,” he gushes. Aside from pop culture, he’s also looking forward to exploring the cuisine. “When I was a kid, there were all of these jokes about how bad British food was. And now it’s one of the great food cities of the world,” Kramer said.