Speakers
Gara LaMarche
Senior Fellow, Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, New York University
Gara LaMarche is senior fellow in the Robert F. Wager School of Public Service at New York University. Mr. LaMarche served as president and CEO of the Atlantic Philanthropies from April 2007 until July 2011. Before joining Atlantic, he was vice president and director of U.S. programs for the Open Society Institute. Previously, he was associate director of Human Rights Watch and director of its Free Expression Project. He was also director of the Freedom-to-Write Program of the PEN American Center and has held a variety of positions at the ACLU. Mr. LaMarche’s articles on human rights and social justice have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, and he is the editor of Speech and Equality: Do We Really Have to Choose? Mr. LaMarche teaches a course on philanthropy and public policy at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and has been an adjunct professor at New School University and The John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. LaMarche has received many awards recognizing his service and leadership, among them the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service from Bard College and the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He is on the boards of StoryCorps, the White House Project, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the Leadership Council of Hispanics in Philanthropy. He is a graduate of Columbia University.
