Kevin Walker

Kevin Walker is president and CEO of Northwest Area Foundation. He spearheads the foundation’s efforts to shape a future in which all people and communities in its region can thrive on their own terms and live free of poverty. Under his leadership, the foundation has evolved to focus on advancing social, racial, and economic justice. It pursues this purpose with grantee partners rooted in its priority communities: Native Americans, people of color, immigrants, refugees, and people in rural areas. At the heart of this approach is NWAF’s commitment, honored every year since 2012, to target 40% of its giving to Native-led organizations.

Prior to joining the Northwest Area Foundation, he spent 13 years with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan, including nine years as director of Mott’s national Pathways Out of Poverty program. His career in the nonprofit sector began in the early 1990s as associate director of Food Gatherers, a community-based anti-hunger organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Walker serves on the board of BoardSource, the national organization dedicated to excellence in nonprofit governance. He previously served for a decade on the board of Philanthropy Northwest, which he chaired from 2017 to 2019. He is also a past board chair of the Minnesota Council on Foundations. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan.