Edward Skloot

executive director, Surdna Foundation

Edward Skloot recently retired as executive director of the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation headquartered in New York City that makes grants in five fields: the environment, neighborhood revitalization, youth organizing, arts, and nonprofit sector issues. The foundation's first professional employee, Mr. Skloot built a staff of 20 and helped Surdna, which has assets of nearly $700 million, earn a national reputation for entrepreneurial grantmaking, collaborative approaches with other funders and grantees, and aggressive solution-finding for complex problems. Mr. Skloot previously founded and ran New Ventures, a consulting firm that created the field of social venturing and nonprofit entrepreneurship; he also wrote the first article ever published on the subject, in *the Harvard Business Review* in 1983. He currently serves on the board of Consumers Union (publisher of *Consumer Reports*) and Venture Philanthropy Partners, a group of venture capitalists helping youth-serving organizations in the Washington, D.C. region. He is a member of the advisory board of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm. Mr. Skloot has written and spoken widely on the subjects of nonprofit management, social venturing and sectoral leadership and is also a member of the Editorial Board of the *Stanford Social Innovation Review*. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and from the Columbia University School of International Affairs.