Russel Sage Foundation

The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of David Leonhardt and Alondra Nelson to its board of trustees effective at its November 2020 board meeting.

David Leonhardt is an American journalist and columnist at The New York Times.  He writes The Morning Briefing newsletter, covering the day’s biggest news and cultural developments, and contributes occasionally to the Sunday Review.  Leonhardt has worked at the Times since 1999; previously, he wrote for Business Week and The Washington Post. He also served as the Times’ Washington bureau chief from 2011-2013 and was founding editor of The Upshot section, which emphasizes data visualization and an analytical approach to news.  In 2011, Leonhardt was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for his graceful penetration of America's complicated economic questions, from the federal budget deficit to health care reform." In 2013, he authored Here's the Deal: How Washington Can Solve the Deficit and Spur Growth, a short best-selling e-book. In addition to the Pulitzer, he won the Gerald Loeb Award for magazine writing in 2009 for The New York Times magazine article, “Obamanomics.” Born in New York in 1973, Leonhardt studied applied mathematics at Yale, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News.

Alondra Nelson is president of the Social Science Research Council and is the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. She was previously professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science. An award-winning author, Nelson has published widely-acclaimed books and articles exploring science, technology, medicine, and social inequality, including The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome and Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. In 2002, Nelson edited “Afrofuturism,” an influential special issue of Social Text, drawing together contributions from scholars and artists, who were members of a synonymous online community she established in 1998. Nelson's essays, reviews, and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Le Nouvel Observateur, and The Boston Globe. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Sociological Research Association. Nelson serves on the boards of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Data & Society, and The Teagle Foundation. Nelson is also a director of the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a Harlem-based youth development organization. Raised in Southern California, Nelson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at San Diego. She earned her PhD from New York University in 2003.