Profile

Pam Foster

Chief Operating Officer, Co-Impact

Pam is the Chief Operating Officer of Co-Impact, a new global model for collaborative philanthropy and social change at scale that includes some of the world’s leading philanthropists, focused on improving the lives of millions by advancing education, improving people’s health, and providing economic opportunity so that all families, no matter where they live, have a more hopeful future. Co-Impact launched officially in November 2017, with The Rockefeller Foundation incubating the new entity as well as being one of its initial core donors. As COO, Pam provides the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure that the organization has the proper people, systems and processes in place to meet its goals.

Prior to joining Co-Impact, Pam served in various roles over almost 20 years for The Rockefeller Foundation, including most recently serving as Managing Director, Program Operations, and Associate General Counsel, leading the Foundation’s program operations and managing an international grants management team, and serving as a strategic legal advisor to the Foundation with respect to its grantmaking and initiatives.

She is Chair of the Board of Directors of Safe Passage Project, a NYC-based 501(c)(3) organization that addresses unmet needs of indigent immigrant youth living in New York by providing legal representation for unaccompanied minors in immigration court. She also serves on the board of Philanthropy New York, which enhances and increases the ability of organizational and individual philanthropists located in the New York region to serve the public good. She was active in the development of NGOsource, the centralized equivalency determination repository run by TechSoup Global, and serves on its advisory board.

Pam received a bachelor’s degree with honors from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and a JD, summa cum laude, from New York Law School, where she currently serves as Vice President of the Alumni Association Board of Directors. She is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey.

Authored Content

  • May 18 2017
    Blog Post Making Risk Routine “Philanthropy is risk capital.” If you work in philanthropy, you’ve likely heard that phrase many times. But a survey conducted by Open Road Alliance in 2015 clearly showed that as a sector, we’re not great about discussing risk, with 76 percent of funders reporting that they don’t ask grantees to talk about project risks in proposals. […] Ellen Taus, Pamela Foster