Six Questions for Valerie Chang, Managing Director of Programs at the MacArthur Foundation

Valerie Chang, managing director of programs at the Macarthur foundation.

The MacArthur Foundation is one of the country’s largest, making grants across a handful of “big bets” that include climate change, criminal justice, and causes in Nigeria. As the managing director of programs for the MacArthur Foundation, Valerie Chang works with the funder’s program teams to design and implement strategies to support its grantmaking initiatives. 

Prior to joining the foundation in 2003, Chang worked for the national office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and several private sector organizations, including Merrill Lynch & Co. and Salomon Brothers, where she researched macroeconomic and political developments in global emerging markets.

Chang recently announced that she’ll be leaving MacArthur on June 30, after nearly 19 years with the foundation. I caught up with her to discuss her circuitous career trajectory, the best advice she’s ever received, and the importance of “taking the call.”

What made you decide you wanted to work in the nonprofit sector?

My career path hasn’t been a straight line—actually far from it. I was an East Asian studies major in college, focusing on Chinese history. But I also volunteered with a social service organization on campus that had a long tradition of social activism. So I think I got my first sense of being more engaged in my local community while I was in college. 

After college, I got a degree in international relations and focused a bit more on economics. I spent some time in the public sector at the Federal Reserve Board, and from there I moved to Wall Street.

I had one “a-ha” moment which led me to the nonprofit sector. I had been working on Wall Street for about seven years, and at some point, I realized I knew more about what was going on in the Brazilian Senate—because at the time, I was working on international emerging markets—than I knew what was happening in New York City.

And so at that point, I wanted to take some of the things that I learned and put them more toward mission-driven and purpose-driven work. I joined the national office of LISC, which is a community development organization that works in rural areas across the U.S. After LISC, I came over to MacArthur nearly 19 years ago.

Who are your biggest influences?

It comes down to my parents and family, who have always been supportive—I’ve been lucky that way. I have a teenage daughter who keeps me grounded and asks the kind of questions that young people ask. They’re probing and provocative, and I’m always having to rethink the way I see the world or explain the world to her. 

I’ve been inspired by people who have mentored me along the way and shown different models of leadership. Ted Truman, my boss at the Fed, is one of them. Oliver Weston is someone I worked with at LISC and Julia Stasch taught me a lot while she was president of MacArthur. I’ve been fortunate to work alongside people who are committed to and passionate about what they do.

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?

I think it comes down to “don’t be afraid to try something new,” but a colleague of mine put it in a way that makes it feel more actionable. She said, “Always take the call, because you never know what might happen.” So I think as a result of “taking the call” at various times in my life, I’ve gone down some paths that I couldn’t have foreseen or planned for myself.

What is it about the state of philanthropy that makes you optimistic?

There’s a lot going on in philanthropy right now, and I feel like one of the things that’s notable is that philanthropy is wrestling with its power and privilege and acknowledging that it needs to work differently.

We shouldn’t get so enamored with our own ideas and processes that we get disconnected from what we have the ability to do, which is to take risks and back people and ideas that market-based investors won’t. It feels like philanthropy is becoming more inclusive in real ways, and that’s energizing.

It also feels like there are new and more models for how to do philanthropy, like what MacKenzie Scott or Melinda French Gates are doing, or Open Philanthropy’s Regranting Challenge. I have colleagues at MacArthur’s affiliate Lever for Change who are thinking about how you find different modes of doing things—that’s exciting. People sometimes want to talk about “old” philanthropy versus “new” philanthropy, and I think there are sweet spots to figure out what the field can do best.

At MacArthur, we raised $125 million in a bond offering, which enabled us to put out more grants to combat COVID and systemic racism at a time when people were uncertain how the pandemic would affect the endowment. We engaged external advisors and worked with people who weren’t in our existing networks, and we found that to be really rewarding and productive.

What was the last great book you read?

I’m one of those people that has a lot of books on my bedside table. I tend to gravitate to nonfiction, but sometimes, I’ll read novels and remember how much I enjoy them. I love “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee, and “Interior Chinatown,” by Charles Yu. Other books in the pile include “Whistling Vivaldi,” “The Selected Works of Audre Lorde,” “Command and Control,” which looks at the safety concerns of America’s nuclear weapons, and “More Than Ready” by Cecilia Munoz. 

You will be leaving MacArthur on June 30 after nearly 19 years with the foundation. What’s next for you?

It has really been a joy to be at MacArthur and to be working in philanthropy, and to come in every day and work with committed colleagues, both inside and outside of my organization, with every one of us trying to make a difference in our communities. That’s not something I take for granted.

As to what’s next, I honestly don’t know yet. I’m still interested in challenges, making a contribution, and tackling something new. I want to commit my time and energy to things that I believe will help make a positive difference in the world. In the short term, I’m looking forward to spending some time with my family this summer. And then I think I might have to go back to the advice I mentioned earlier and “take the call,” because who knows what could happen next?