Luis A. Ubiñas became the President of the Ford Foundation in 2008. His transformative leadership resulted in a restructuring and streamlining of the Foundation with an emphasis on issue areas that include Democratic and Accountable Government, Economic Fairness, Metropolitan Opportunity and Educational Opportunity and Scholarship. As the second-largest philanthropic organization in the country, the Ford Foundation is on the frontlines of social change around the world, working to change social structures and institutions so that everyone has a voice in decisions that affect them and the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Mr. Ubiñas grew up in the South Bronx and earned an AB (magna cum laude in Government) at Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.  On his own educational journey from the South Bronx to Harvard and beyond, Ubiñas has said that “access to educational opportunities changed [his] life,” and he wouldn’t be at Ford “had it not been for the work done ...in the 1960s and 1970s to increase equal access to education.”

In fact, the Ford Foundation recently pledged $100 million to transform urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including New York. The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and funds research and reform in four areas: teacher quality, student assessment, a longer school day and year, and school funding.  Ubiñas intends the initiative "to shake up the conversations surrounding school reform and help spur some truly imaginative thinking and partnerships."

Mr. Ubiñas has also recently made the case for universal children’s development accounts, noting that the recent economic crisis and other events have created a unique opportunity to combat poverty by increasing access to economic opportunity for the most disadvantaged. The Ford Foundation has made more than $60 million in grants and committed $20 million more to supporting various asset building initiatives, including a ten year project that is testing children's development accounts at 12 sites throughout the country.  In his own words: “Beyond building financial assets, these accounts are about making poor families full participants in our society. They're about independence — freedom to chart one's own course, pursue one's own dreams, and break free from the cycle of dependence that has marked government anti-poverty efforts of years' past.  And all of this is possible through a market-based approach that simply makes available to poor families the same incentives to save that many of our own families take for granted. It's a solution that is well overdue.”

Previous to Ford, Mr. Ubiñas was a director at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, where he worked for 18 years. He serves on the UN Permanent Advisory Memorial Committee, the World Bank Philanthropic Sector Advisory Committee and the Board of the New York Public Library, and is a trustee of the Collegiate School for Boys.

Mr. Ubiñas' wife, Deborah Tolman, is one of the leading feminist scholars in the United States. They live in New York and have two sons.

Learn more about Luis A. Ubiñas
and the Ford Foundation

Eleanor Roosevelt Award

 Nancy Locker, a Vice President of the CCC Board of Directors, is a former President and Chairman of CCC and recipient of the CCC Founders Award. Ms. Locker was an early and strong advocate for CCC instituting the Works on Paper art show as an annual CCC fundraiser and has co-chaired the event seven times since its inception in 2002, as well as co-chairing CCC Celebrates at MoMA in 2010. In the process, she has helped to heighten CCC’s profile in New York City, triple special events fundraising capacity and raise nearly $5 million for our programs and services.

Ms. Locker is well known at CCC for her tirelessness, enthusiasm and inclusiveness, and applies equal energy to special events and the many task forces and committees on which she has served including those related to health and mental health, child welfare, housing, education and child care. She chaired the 2007 CCC Executive Director Search Committee and has also chaired the CCC Nominating Committee and the CCC Juvenile Justice Campaign.

Ms. Locker took the CCC Community Leadership Course in 1996, became a Board Member in 1998, President in 2000, Chairman in 2002 and has been a Vice President since 2005.

Ms. Locker also serves on the Board of Directors of F·E·G·S Health and Human Services System, where she chairs the Education and Vocational Services Committee, and is a former Board Member of Inwood House. She has also volunteered at the Stephen Gaynor School and the Horace Mann School. Ms. Locker earned a BA from Smith College and an MA from Columbia University. She and her husband Alan live in New York City and have four adult children.   

Samuel P. Peabody Award for Community Activism

Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) brings five New York City youth organizations together to fight for change through local and citywide organizing strategies. Striving for social and economic justice, UYC makes sure youth are heard and empowered.  The Urban Youth Collaborative counts as a recent success their high-profile campaign against the threatened end of student MetroCards. UYC advocacy secured the continuation of reduced-fare student bus and subway rides to and from school.

In 2004, New York City high school students formed the Urban Youth Collaborative to fight for a voice in high school reform. Young people in the Bronx and Brooklyn had experienced a dramatic, top-down restructuring of large high schools, without opportunities to provide input or to raise concerns about the overcrowding and safety problems on their campuses. In response, youth leaders of the Future of Tomorrow, Make the Road by Walking, Sistas and Brothas United of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and Youth On the Move/Mothers On the Move, in collaboration with the NYU Community Involvement Program, began organizing a citywide force of young people.

Learn more about Urban Youth Collaborative.

Master of Ceremonies

Melissa Russo serves as anchor of WNBC’s 6 and 11PM Saturday evening newscasts. She is also an award-winning Government Affairs Reporter, covering New York politics and policy for more than a decade. In addition to Russo’s on-going coverage of City Hall, she has brought attention to the struggles of New York's most vulnerable citizens including children, the elderly and the homeless, which has resulted in changes to government policy.

Ms. Russo has been the first reporter to break major stories including the breakdown of the computerized case-management system used by the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) and the waste of thousands of childcare slots due to bureaucratic clumsiness. Ms. Russo was also the first reporter to obtain access inside the City's troubled Emergency Assistance Unit where she uncovered and documented deplorable conditions and policies that harm children. Russo also broke the story concerning a loophole in a State adoption law that threatened to separate foster children from their lifelong caregivers.

Prior to joining WNBC, Melissa began her TV journalism career as an original member of the NY1 News Political Unit. While there, she covered all aspects of New York City politics and hosted “Inside City Hall,” NY1’s live hour-long political program that interviewed Senators, Mayors and various other policymakers.

Learn more about Melissa Russo
and NBC New York.