NEW YORK, NY.- Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most influential philanthropies, recently recalled the day his assistant excitedly told him that President Barack Obama wanted to meet him. He gently corrected her.

“I said that President Obama wants to meet with the president of the Ford Foundation — he isn’t interested in meeting with Darren Walker,” he said. “It’s important to have that clarity so that when the day comes that you’re no longer president of the Ford Foundation, you can still find joy and happiness and satisfaction.”

For Walker, who turns 65 next month, that day will soon arrive. He announced Monday that he would step down as the president of the Ford Foundation at the end of 2025 after what will have been a consequential 12-year tenure in which he shifted the institution’s focus to inequality and oversaw the distribution of $7 billion in grants.

It is a momentous departure. In reorienting the Ford Foundation to address inequality, Walker was aiming to address “not just wealth disparities,” he wrote in 2015, “but injustices in politics, culture and society that compound inequality and limit opportunity.” He played a key role in getting Ford and other foundations to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to help the city of Detroit exit bankruptcy in a way that spared retirees from deeper pension cuts and safeguarded the collection at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

But he also faced criticism at times, and raised eyebrows early in his tenure when he joined the board of PepsiCo, which struck some philanthropy experts as discordant, given the company’s role lobbying against public health legislation. In response, Walker said at the time that he would bring his “perspective as someone who is deeply concerned about the welfare of people in poor and vulnerable communities.”

During his tenure, the Ford Foundation’s assets grew to $16.8 billion at the end of last year from $11.1 billion just before he began.

“What Darren has done to the world of philanthropy has truly been transformational — that it’s more than just giving dollars, it’s how do you bring about real change in society,” said Kenneth I. Chenault, a former chair and CEO of American Express. “I would call him a Renaissance man with a conscience.”

In an interview, Walker said he had begun discussions about his departure with the board two years ago. “George Washington had it right: You should leave before it’s time to go,” he said.

The Ford Foundation — which was established in 1936 by Edsel Ford, whose father, Henry, founded Ford Motor Co. — has, over the decades, supported the creation of public television, aided American orchestras, given money to civil rights and human rights groups and provided relief to hurricane-struck communities. Walker said it was time for a new chapter.

“Philanthropy as a field needs new leaders and needs a constant refreshing because as a sector we can be self-satisfied and lose the edge to our work,” he said. “There is no doubt that Henry Ford would be surprised that a Black gay man was president of his foundation, but I see that as a testament to this country’s ability to live up to its potential as a democracy and as a diverse community.”

Obama, whose own philanthropies have been supported by Ford, praised Walker’s leadership. “He’s devoted his career to social justice, human rights and reducing inequality around the world — and he’s inspired countless organizations and individuals to do the same,” he said.

Under Walker, Ford increased grants to organizations in communities of color to $206 million from $111 million in 2014, and grants to help women and girls were increased to $124 million from $88 million during the same period.

In 2023, when Ford gave out $610 million in the United States and internationally, the amount given through its gender, racial and ethnic justice program — which began in 2016 during Walker’s tenure — was second only to the amount from its civic engagement and government program. More than half of its grants went to organizations led by people of color, and more than half went to organizations led by women. Over the past five years, Ford has given $400 million to organizations focused on disability. Ford has also supported journalism programs, including some at The New York Times.

Walker “has led the entire philanthropic community to reexamine and reimagine its bedrock assumptions,” philanthropist Melinda French Gates said in a statement.

The foundation has gone to great lengths to foster greater equity in the arts. In 2018, Ford, with the Walton Family Foundation, committed $6 million toward diversifying the curators and management at art museums. It helped underwrite the Metropolitan Opera’s first production by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” and has supported diversity initiatives at the School of American Ballet, the training academy of New York City Ballet.

Walker has been an influential figure in the country’s cultural ecosystem, playing behind-the-scenes roles in museum director searches or handling cultural controversies and becoming a ubiquitous presence at galas and glittery events.

His tenure hasn’t always been smooth. In 2020, he was criticized by some for his handling of the controversy surrounding an exhibition of artist Philip Guston’s work, which included depictions of Ku Klux Klan figures. Ford had contributed $1 million to the show, and Walker was among those who supported postponing it until 2024 in the wake of the George Floyd killings so more context could be added. Prominent artists criticized the decision, saying the institutions “fear controversy” and “lack faith in the intelligence of their audience.” The show ended up opening in Boston with some changes in 2022.

Some critics have noted that Ford supports the work of some people who are friendly with Walker. It has supported an Art for Justice Fund started by art collector and patron Agnes Gund, which promotes criminal justice reform and seeks to reduce mass incarceration in the United States, as well as the work of some well-known curators and artists who are also his friends.

“I plead guilty to believing in the idea of Black genius and supporting it,” Walker said. “I plead guilty when friends like Agnes Gund have big ideas for collaboration — to investing in that for impact in the field. There is no doubt that I have supported the work of people who I enjoy friendships with.”

In 2019 his support for building smaller jails to replace New York City’s deeply troubled Rikers Island complex drew protests from opponents of mass incarceration, including more than 100 Ford Fellows. And this spring he was pressured to decline an honorary degree from Columbia University because of the way the university cracked down on pro-Palestinian campus protests. The main commencement ceremony wound up being canceled; Walker said he planned to accept the honor in person next year.

“He’s been a president at a really challenging time,” said Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a group that supports criminal justice reform and racial justice that gets support from Ford. “The politics around philanthropy have never been more polarized.”

Walker said the protest over his support for building smaller jails to replace Rikers — which prompted ugly social media posts — was particularly difficult, coming as it did shortly after the sudden death of his longtime partner, David Beitzel. “It was horrible — people were just really cruel,” Walker said.

Despite such trials, Walker has managed to walk the fine line between agitating for change from the outside and being able to effect it as an insider. “He’s never personal when he pushes an institution or a leader to think differently about something,” Stevenson said. “That gives him a kind of credibility.”

Raised in Louisiana and East Texas, with a single mother who worked as a nurse’s aide, Walker was recruited in 1965 for the first preschool class of the federal poverty program Head Start. After the University of Texas and stints as a corporate lawyer and bond salesman, he volunteered full-time at the Children’s Storefront school in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and went on to serve as chief operating officer of the Abyssinian Development Corp., the Harlem community development organization.

He eventually became vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing programs like the Rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina.

In preparing to leave Ford, Walker said that serving as president “has been the honor of my life.” The Ford Foundation board will now work to identify a successor who can build on Walker’s legacy, its chair, Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, said in a statement.

Given the influence Walker has achieved — not to mention his compensation package of about $1.4 million — his job is not an easy one to leave.

But Walker said it was important to have a changing of the guard. “Some people stay in foundation jobs too long because it’s intoxicating every day to be in a position where people are deferential,” he said, “where people are constantly offering thanks and gratitude.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.