Kathryn S. Fuller

Chair

Kathryn S. Fuller, JD, was elected chair of the Board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in January 2021. She has been a member of the Board since January 2011.

Kathryn, an attorney and philanthropic leader, currently serves as advisory board vice chair of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; as a trustee of the Greater Himalayas Foundation and The Summit Foundation; as a member of the advisory council of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; on the board of directors of Alcoa, Inc.; and as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is president emerita and honorary board member of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF–US) and was president and chief executive officer of WWF from 1989 until 2005. Prior to becoming president and CEO, she served as executive vice president, general counsel, and director of WWF’s programs in public policy and wildlife trade monitoring. Before joining WWF, Kathryn was an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, first in the Office of Legal Counsel, then as a trial attorney in the Land and Natural Resources Division, where she helped create the Wildlife and Marine Resources Section, becoming chief of that section in 1981. Kathryn was a special advisor to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars from 2005 to 2006. She served on the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees as member at large and chair, and on the Corporation of Brown University.

Kathryn received her BA in English and American Literature from Brown University and a law degree with honors from the University of Texas, and pursued graduate studies in marine, estuarine, and environmental science at the University of Maryland. She is the recipient of a number of honorary degrees.