Institute for Philanthropy: Our New CEO

We are delighted to welcome Kurt Hoffman as our new CEO.

Kurt was appointed as the CEO of the Institute for Philanthropy in December 2011. In his early career, Kurt spent 10 years as a Senior Fellow and Head of the International Development Group at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. During this period, his academic research, graduate and post experience teaching focused on the challenges of using science, technology and innovation to tackle poverty in developing countries while he also published widely in peer reviewed academic journals, books and treatises. In the subsequent decade, he designed poverty alleviating interventions for foundations and development agencies often focused on enterprise and job creation in technology-intensive and export-oriented industries.

In parallel with his advisory work Kurt also received a real world grounding in entrepreneurship and business development by launching two commercial start-ups using his own finance and private and institutional venture capital (one a modest failure and one a spectacular success!), oversaw, as Chairman of the Board, the successful turnaround and trade sale of a significant family business in the south of England; and with help from leading philanthropists, developed a major environmental fund-raising initiative for the global airline industry.

From 1997 until late 2008, as first architect and then Director, he cultivated the Shell Foundation into an influential, corporate, strategic philanthropy vehicle whose success helped catalyse the emergence the "impact investing" movement and the "shared value" model of corporate social investment. The initiatives Kurt developed and oversaw during this period leveraged more than $1 billion in external financing and focused, for example, on small enterprise creation in Africa, reducing morbidity and mortality rates from respiratory diseases suffered by 500,000 women and children in southern India, and helping megacities like Shanghai, Mexico City and Istanbul introduce cleaner, cheaper, safer and quicker public bus systems now used by 2+ million people daily.

More recently on behalf of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, he developed and directed TransFarm Africa - an investment and policy change initiative seeking to commercialise subsistence small farmer agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Institute’s new Chairman, Beatrice Hollond comments on this appointment: “Kurt’s track record in global strategic philanthropy is exceptional. His thirty years’ experience in analysing and tackling major social problems sustainably and at scale via senior positions in academia, the private sector and civil society groups underpin his established role as an influential analyst and thought leader in our sector. We are very excited to welcome him to the Institute”.