Christopher Harris

Christopher Harris currently serves on the boards of the Stifting SED Fund (the Hague), the Friends of the Fondation de France (New York/Paris) and the Central Penn College Education Foundation (Harrisburg). He was for four years Senior Consultant to the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) Oslo. Until 2010 he served for a decade as the Senior Program Officer on Philanthropy at the Ford Foundation where he worked on how philanthropy can be best used as a tool for social justice and peace.  While at Ford Christopher supported the founding of Trust Africa and the Arab and Brazil Human Rights Funds. In 2007 he founded the international Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace, now PSJP. Prior to Ford he was a vice president at the Council on Foundations and served with the Council of Chief State School Officers, where he worked on improving US and state education policy for the most marginalized students.  He has worked in the West Bank and Gaza with Palestinian educators, and in Somalia and Ethiopia analyzing emergency assistance.  He has a doctorate from Harvard University and was on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review.  He has edited several books on education policy and written a number of articles and reports about philanthropy.  He lives in Philadelphia (US).