Gara LaMarche
From April 2007 to June 2011, Gara LaMarche was President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, an international grantmaking foundation dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Atlantic focuses on four critical social challenges: Ageing, Children & Youth, Population Health, and Reconciliation & Human Rights. Programmes funded by Atlantic operate primarily in Australia, Bermuda, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United States and Viet Nam.
Before joining Atlantic, Mr. LaMarche served as Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs for the Open Society Institute (OSI), a foundation established by philanthropist George Soros. Mr. LaMarche joined OSI in 1996 to launch its U.S. Programs, which focus on challenges to social justice and democracy.
Mr. LaMarche previously served as Associate Director of Human Rights Watch and Director of its Free Expression Project from 1990 to 1996. He helped build the organisation’s work in the United States and on lesbian and gay rights; conducted human rights investigations in Egypt, Cuba, Greece and Hungary; and wrote reports on freedom of expression issues in the 1991 Gulf War, Miami’s Cuban exile community and the United Kingdom. He was Director of the Freedom-to-Write Program of the PEN American Center from 1988 to 1990, when PEN played a leading role in campaigns to lift Iran’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie and challenged restrictions on arts funding in the United States.
He served in a variety of positions with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Mr. LaMarche first became associated with the ACLU in 1972 at age 18 as a member of its national Academic Freedom Committee. He was the Associate Director of the ACLU’s New York branch and the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. At the Texas ACLU, he led campaigns to provide adequate representation for death row inmates and oppose discriminatory treatment of persons with AIDS in the early days of the epidemic.
Mr. LaMarche is the author of numerous articles on human rights and social justice issues, which have appeared in publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Huffington Post, The Texas Observer and The Wharton Magazine, and is the editor of Speech and Equality: Do We Really Have to Choose? (New York University Press, 1996). 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 been recognised as a “Good Guy” by the Texas Women’s Political Caucus and as a Voice for Justice by the Fifth Avenue Committee. He has received the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service from Bard College, the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Progressive Leadership Award from USAction, the President’s Award from the National Council of La Raza, the Champion Award from the Center for Community Change, and the Hope Award from Providence House. From 1988 to 1989, he was a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York. He has also served as a judge for the Sundance Documentary Fund, the PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, the ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty, the Roosevelt Institute’s Four Freedoms Award, and the Lodestar Foundation’s Collaboration Prize.
Mr. LaMarche serves on the boards of StoryCorps, The White House Project, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and the Leadership Council of Hispanics in Philanthropy.
A Westerly, Rhode Island native, Mr. LaMarche is a graduate of Columbia College at Columbia University in New York.
