Gara LaMarche

Gara LaMarche is 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 problems: Ageing, Disadvantaged 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. LaMarche joined Atlantic in April 2007 to lead the organisation through its final chapter as the foundation disburses its remaining $3 billion endowment and completes active grantmaking by 2016.

Before joining Atlantic, LaMarche served as Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs for the Open Society Institute (OSI), a foundation established by philanthropist George Soros. LaMarche joined OSI in 1996 to launch its U.S. Programs, which focus on challenges to social justice and democracy.

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), with which he first became associated 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 from 1979 to 1984 and the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas from 1984 to 1988. 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.

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, The Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Nation, The American Prospect, 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). LaMarche teaches a course on philanthropy and public policy at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and was an adjunct professor at New School University and The John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He 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 President’s Award from the National Council of La Raza, the Social Impact Award of The Urban Justice Center, 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.

LaMarche serves on the boards of PEN American Center, The White House Project, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and on the Leadership Council of Hispanics in Philanthropy.

A Westerly, R.I. native, LaMarche graduated from Columbia College in New York in 1976.