Elizabeth Alexander – poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and arts activist – is president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in arts and culture, and humanities in higher education. Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for 15 years and chaired the African American Studies Department. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund.

Notably, Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009 and is author or co-author of fourteen books, most recently a memoir, The Light of the World, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015.

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