The Ford Foundation: a fork-tongued global mafia front

Sep 01, 2025

The Ford Foundation of New York City presents itself as a “progressive” and left-liberal entity.

It says it is “a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy with offices in the United States and ten regions around the globe” which is “working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide”. [1]

Formed in 1936, by 1950 it had defined its five areas of action as “economic improvements, education, freedom and democracy, human behavior, and world peace”. [2]

Wikipedia takes this at face value, faithfully relaying: “Since the middle of the 20th century, many of the Ford Foundation’s programs have focused on increased under-represented or ‘minority’ group representation in education, science and policy-making.

“For over eight decades their mission decisively advocates and supports the reduction of poverty and injustice among other values including the maintenance of democratic values, promoting engagement with other nations, and sustaining human progress and achievement at home and abroad”. [3]

But in fact it has been known for decades that the Ford Foundation’s do-gooding “mission” is a mask and that it acts as a front for the US deep state.

Furthermore, despite being named after the “anti-semitic” industrialist Henry Ford, [4] it is closely enmeshed in the zio-imperialist mafia (ZIM), as we will see.

The Wikispooks profile of the Ford Foundation notes: “During the Cold War it was a CIA cut-out, to funnel cash to front groups, like NGOs and ‘independent’ media.

“Its present day function is most likely the same. From its very origins there was a close structural relation and inter-change of personnel at the highest levels between the CIA and the Ford Foundation”. [5]

The Church Committee report into CIA activities stated in 1976: “The use of philanthropic organizations was a convenient way to pass funds, in that large amounts could be transferred rapidly, and in a form that need not alert unwitting officers of the recipient organizations to their source”. [6]

By the late 1950s the Ford Foundation had assets totalling more than $3 billion and was described by insider Dwight Macdonald as “a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some”. [7]

Frances Stonor Saunders writes: “At times, it seemed as if the Ford Foundation was simply an extension of government in the area of international cultural propaganda.

“The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects”. [8]

In 1950 Paul Hoffman (pictured) became president of the Ford Foundation, she explains.

“Arriving straight from his job as administrator of the Marshall Plan, Hoffman had received a full immersion course in the problems of Europe, and in the power of ideas to address those problems. He was fluent in the language of psychological warfare…” [9]

This connection was deepened two years later when Marshall planner Richard Bissell, who had worked directly under Hoffman, also transferred to the Ford Foundation.

He declared that there was “nothing to prevent an individual from exerting as much influence through his work in a private foundation as he could through work in the government”. [10]

The career of John McCloy, who became president of the Ford Foundation in 1957, speaks volumes about what has always really lain behind it.

Writes Saunders: “By the time he came to the Ford Foundation, he had been Assistant Secretary of War, president of the World Bank, and High Commissioner of Germany.

“In 1953 he also became chairman of the Rockefellers’ Chase Manhattan Bank, and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, he was a Warren Commission appointee.

“Throughout, he maintained his career as a Wall Street attorney for the seven big oil companies, and as director of numerous corporations”. [11]

The connection to the Council on Foreign Relations is a significant one, because this sister body to the UK’s Chatham House [12] is, like its London equivalent, a known front for the Rothschilds and their zio-imperialist mafia, as I have previously explained. [13]

Indeed, Saunders goes on to reveal that the Ford Foundation itself “was one of the single largest donors to the Council on Foreign Relations”. [14]

The foundation also regularly funnelled money to the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom – £500,000 in 1957, for example. [15]

From 1964, when the spotlight was being shone on its deep state funding, the CCF’s boss, Michael Josselson, suggested cutting the financial link with the CIA, “to be replaced entirely by Ford Foundation funding” [16] and, says Saunders, by 1967 it was “financed entirely by the Ford Foundation”. [17]

The Ford Foundation’s activities today very much form part of the pseudo-ethical global system of control so expertly analysed by the Escapekey blog. [18]

“Progressive” foundations and NGOs use what sounds like the language of the left to call for “social change” that is in fact intended to take us in the opposite direction to that which one is supposed to imagine – towards increased exploitation under totalitarian conditions.

As researcher Alison McDowell explains: “Powerful interests are using the Sustainable Development Goals to mask their plans to remake the world as a digital panopticon.

“Financiers are going to claim they’re doing positive things with their portfolios by configuring asset allocations to align with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), and that’s where the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals come in.

“It is the sustainability goals that will open the door to smart city infrastructure with facial recognition, cashless economies, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence used to implement broad threat assessments; the threat of natural disasters as well as threats posed by individual dissidents and groups”. [19]

In my April 2021 article ‘Divide, rule and profit: the intersectional impact racket’, I described how the “woke” agenda, often fronted by black and brown puppets rather than the traditional “WASP” ones, is being used to advance this sinister agenda and, in particular, impact capitalism. [20]

It comes as no surprise at all, then, to see the Ford Foundation declare its support for this exploitative Zionist-heavy global racket, which I recently nicknamed “Zimpact Slavery”. [21]

It states: “Impact investing is on the rise, and as more investors see the benefits of striving for a more inclusive form of capitalism, the need for relevant tracking and data on this progress is becoming increasingly important”. [22]

A glance at its recent impact-related funding reveals a distinctly neo-imperialist emphasis.

For instance, in January 2025 the Ford Foundation gave $400,000 to The Bank Information Center, “an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization” claiming to want to “democratize development” but whose work includes “participating in World Bank policy reviews”. [23] This money was earmarked “for the China-Latin America Sustainable Investment Initiative”. [24]

In February 2025 it gave $700,000 to the “Global Steering Group for Impact Investment… for its work to engage National Advisory Boards and Partners on impact investing, especially in Asia”. [25]

And in April 2025 the Ford Foundation gave $300,000 to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers “to promote philanthropy and impact investing in China”. [26]

That same month it awarded $90,000 to the Pan-Atlantic University’s Lagos Business School in Nigeria and its “Sustainable Impact Philanthropy Program”. [27]

It also gave $80,000 to the Migration and Development Impact Foundation “to scale up financial resilience and mental health awareness trainings for civil society organizations in select states in Nigeria”. [28]

And $75,000 went to Eish Impact in southern Africa, which says it is all about “Positive Social Change. Innovation. Sustainable Development” and “transforming lives and futures by catalysing systemic change”. [29]

Then in May 2025 the Ford Foundation gave $800,000 “to support social entrepreneurs in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region and core support to build institutional capacity as a leading platform for impact driven social enterprises”. [30]

It has, in 2025, given $100,000 to Global Impact [31] and $150,000 to Sozo Impact, Inc. [32]

The foundation has also passed considerable sums of money to the New Venture Fund, “creative problem-solvers who help change leaders accelerate positive impact”. [33]

In April 2025 this entity was given $225,000 as “Core support to Governing for Impact” [34] and then the following month it received a whopping Ford Foundation grant of $2.8 million as “core support for the US Impact Investing Alliance to raise awareness of impact investing in the US, fostering deployment of impact capital and working with stakeholders to help build the impact investing ecosystem”. [35]

Ford Foundation president Darren Walker was, in fact, a co-founder of the US Impact Investing Alliance. [36]

The Presidents’ Council of this body, which was originally called the US National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, includes the Ford Foundation itself, as well as the likes of the Meyer Memorial Trust, Omidyar Network, the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation, which I have conclusively exposed as a ZIM front. [37]

The US Impact Investing Alliance explains that it is part of GSG Impact (formerly the Global Steering Group on Impact Investing), established in August 2015.

“GSG Impact currently has National Partners representing more than 40 countries and brings together impact leaders from the worlds of finance, business, government and philanthropy”.

Its mission is to “build impact economies across the globe, creating the infrastructure and incentives for capital to flow for the SDGs”. [38]

There was a Covid tie-in to this. Wikipedia relates: “Under Walker’s leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit organization to issue a $1 billion earmarked social bond in US capital markets for proceeds to strengthen and stabilize non-profit organizations affected by COVID-19”. [39]

And, of course it was essential to “address the threat of climate change, and support the transition to a green economy”. [40]

The career path walked by Walker (pictured), who took over as Ford president in 2013, sheds a lot of light on the real nature of the foundation, behind all its saccharine rhetoric.

A bizarre article on the Tablet site in 2023 tried to frame him as an enemy of the Zionist empire.

Complaining that the body he headed was originally “created from the fortune of one of the most notorious antisemites in American history”, it criticised him for sending aid to Gaza “without making mention of the Israeli hostages held there”. [41]

But a closer look at Walker’s affiliations reveals that his ZIM credentials could hardly be bettered.

His Ford appointment in fact looks more like an internal ZIM promotion from his previous role as vice-president at the Rockefeller Foundation. [42]

There, we learn from Ford, he oversaw “global and domestic programs including the Rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina”.

Ah yes, the old “build back better” scam.

His next role, after leaving Ford at the end of October 2025, will be on the board of directors of The Obama Foundation, named after former president Barack Obama and former “first lady” Michelle Obama, which is apparently “focused on encouraging active involvement in democracy”. [43]

Obama was described in 2012 by Adam Schiff in the Jewish Journal as “a true friend of Israel”.

Apparently seeing beyond the “humanitarian” verbiage often deployed by “centre left” politicians (and indeed by the Ford Foundation), Schiff insisted: “Barack Obama has never wavered in his support for Israel. He is a stalwart friend and his actions speak louder than words”. [44]

Walker began his illustrious career at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, a multinational law firm which, says Wikipedia, “has been more active on large merger and acquisitions deals involving Russian companies under sanctions or restrictions than any other law firm since 2010”. [45]

It adds: “Cleary Gottlieb has been engaged in several cases involving the restructuring of sovereign debt”.

In November 2023, it was one of the big pro-Zionist law firms that sent a letter to top US law school deans warning that opposing the Gaza Genocide (so-called “anti-semitism”) would have “corporate hiring consequences” for their students. [46]

Walker also worked for UBS, which Wikipedia says “holds a strong foothold in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the world’s largest private bank.

“UBS manages the largest amount of private wealth in the world, counting approximately half of the world’s billionaires among its clients, with over US$6 trillion in assets.

“Based on international deal flow and political influence, the firm is considered one of the ‘biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world'”. [47]

UBS, which absorbed Crédit Suisse in 2024, has been involved in so many tax evasion controversies that Wikipedia has a special page devoted to them.

This states: “The Swiss investment bank and financial services company, UBS Group AG, has been at the center of numerous tax evasion and avoidance investigations undertaken by US, French, German, Israeli, and Belgian tax authorities as a consequence of their strict banking secrecy practices…

“In 2011, US authorities began investigating three of Israel’s largest banks, Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim and Mizrahi-Tefahot, suspected of helping their American clients evade taxes.

“In 2014, Israel arrested 28 people after the investigation revealed thousands of Swiss bank accounts held by Israelis”. [48]

Walker is on the Global Commission on the Future of Work, convened in 2019 by the International Labour Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations. [49]

Wikipedia informs us: “With its focus on international development, it is a member of the United Nations Development Group, a coalition of UN organizations aimed at helping meet the Sustainable Development Goals”. [50]

Such is Walker’s standing in the eyes of the controlling cabal that he has been the recipient of no fewer than 16 honorary degrees and has not only been awarded France’s highest cultural honour, the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, but also appointed to the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for “services to UK/US relations”. [51]

He has been included on endless “leadership” lists, including TIME’s annual 100 Most Influential People, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Ebony’s Power 100, and Out magazine’s Power 50.

Walker was named Wall Street Journal’s 2020 Philanthropy Innovator of the Year and 2023 Foundation Leader of the Year by Inside Philanthropy. [52]

Like so many in his milieu, Walker is a member of the aforementioned ZIM front, the Council on Foreign Relations, and he sits on the boards of PepsiCo and Ralph Lauren, both boycotted by many because of their links to Israel. [53]

He is also on the board of Bloomberg, the privately-held financial, software, data, and media company co-founded in 1981, with a 12% ownership investment by the Bank of America, by “famously pro-Israel” billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who has been hailed by Israel365News as a “Zionaire”. [53]

Lined up to take over from Walker as top dog at Ford in November 2025 is Heather Gerken (pictured).

The foundation announced in July that this “nationally recognised expert on constitutional law” would be leaving her job as dean of Yale Law School to become its 11th president. [54]

Francisco Cigarroa, chair of the Ford board of trustees, claimed Gerken had “a knowledge and passion for justice that is centered on the values of democracy and helping advance human achievement for all citizens”. [55]

This typically sugar-coated introduction certainly chimes in with Gerken’s public image as someone vaguely well-meaning and liberal.

Indeed, like Walker and his Gaza moment, she even appeared to be bit of rebel when, in January 2024, she advised Jewish students complaining about a spike in “antisemitism” on campus because of the Gaza Genocide to “seek counseling”. [56]

But, announcing her arrival, Cigarroa declared that “her life’s work resonates with the mission of the Ford Foundation”, thereby indicating that something distinctly unwholesome lurks behind Gerken’s smiley public persona.

I think we can find a clue to what that might involve in her own account of the roots of her professional career.

Talking in an interview about the prohibitive cost of a legal education, she said: “So I turned down Yale Law School. I was a kid with no lawyers in my family. And Michigan called me, and they decided to create the first Darrow Scholarship and give it to me… And it was an enormous gift. I’m always thankful for it”. [57]

So who is this “they” to whom she was always to remain thankful?

It turns out that University of Michigan Law School’s Darrow Scholarship, seemingly created specifically for Gerken, was financed by corporate lawyer Stan Stroup and his wife Sylvia. [58]

Stroup’s career took him from the First National Bank of Chicago to the Bank of California, Norwest Corp, and Wells Fargo & Co, where he was executive vice president and general counsel until his retirement in 2004. [59]

Wikipedia states: “Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with a significant global presence.

“The company operates in 35 countries and serves over 70 million customers worldwide. It is a systemically important financial institution according to the Financial Stability Board, and is considered one of the ‘Big Four Banks’ in the United States, alongside JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup”. [60]

It is less than fondly remembered by many customers for the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal in which “by setting the client’s PIN to ‘0000’, bankers were able to control client accounts and were able to enroll them in programs such as online banking”. [61]

It seems that Gerken continues to enjoy strong connections to the world of Big Money.

The New York Post notes, regarding her time at Yale: “Gerken has clout with the school administration because of her friendships with several wealthy alumni who are backing her push for the presidency”. [62]

Two famously generous Yale alumni are Ronnie F. Heyman and her late husband, Samuel J. Heyman – a “corporate raider” [63] – who have financed everything from the Heyman Chair in Legal Ethics to the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale and Heyman Commons, a kosher dining hall on campus. [64]

Ronnie Heyman (pictured below) is chair of GAF Industries, a subsidiary of Standard Industries, “an American privately-held global industrial conglomerate headquartered in New York City”. [65]

She is described as “an active philanthropist involved in a broad swath of institutions spanning health, humanitarian aid, and cultural affairs” and is a member (like Walker) of ZIM’s Council on Foreign Relations. [66]

In October 2023, Gerken gushed: “Ronnie Heyman is known for her generous philanthropy and her deep commitment to respectful discourse”. [67]

The occasion for this praise was the launch of the Ronnie F. Heyman ’72 Crossing Divides Program, “designed to foster discourse across the political and ideological spectrum and reinforce the core values of lawyering”.

Declared Gerken: “At Yale Law School, we have a storied tradition of not only crossing divides, but forging friendships across divides”. [68]

In the first such event the “divide” resided in the fact that one of the speakers had been White House general counsel under the “center left” Democratic Party’s Obama, while the other had been counsel to the George W Bush and Dick Cheney presidential campaign with the “right-wing” Republican Party. [69]

The nurturing of “friendship” and “core values” in the face of this party-political rivalry must surely have been aided by the fact that both speakers, Bob Bauer and Ben L. Ginsberg, are, like Heyman, Jewish. [70]

It is worth noting, on this matter, that Gerken’s chair at Yale – “Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor” – was named after the late Jewish-American “real estate investor and philanthropist” Sol Goldman, and his now-deceased widow (pictured). [71]

Gerken has experience in the corridors of power and was a senior legal advisor to “true friend of Israel” Obama on both his presidential campaigns. [72]

And her proximity to the ultra-rich has undoubtedly influenced her ideas on how the political system could be improved.

She told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2016: “The only way to remedy this problem is for philanthropists to invest in building the democratic infrastructure”. [73]

Hmmm…

The Inside Philanthropy site notes that since 2018 Gerken has been “one of the (paid) board members of the Mellon Foundation”. [74]

This “New York City-based private foundation” is – like the Ford Foundation which Gerken is joining – very interested in impact investment. [75]

This passion was reflected in its June 2025 announcement that it had appointed to its board of trustees one Margaret Anadu, “a demonstrated strategist and leader in impact investing and providing equitable access to capital”. [76]

The Mellon Foundation has given $3,000,000 to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to support its Social Impact Fund; [77] $500,000 and then $750,000 to Social Impact Commons, Inc; [78] $425,000 to Americans for the Arts, Inc for its Arts + Social Impact Explorer 2.0; [79] $600,000 to Global Impact; [80] $750,000 to Forward Impact; [81] and $900,000 to Sozo Impact, Inc. [82]

It enjoys close ties to other foundations and individuals that make up the unelected power structure in New York and elsewhere – including ZIM’s Rockefeller network.

In 2018 it handed out $100,000 to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc “to support Upstart Co-Lab’s research efforts for impact investing in the creative economy”. [83]

And in 2020 it was a co-founder of the “NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund” alongside the likes of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation (of course!), Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. [84]

Gerken’s husband, David Simon, [85] is also very much part of the globalist milieu.

He works as a senior lecturer in “Global Affairs”, with a special interest in Africa, and is director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. [86]

He has also been a consultant for various United Nations offices, including the Millennium Development Project and the UN Development Program. [87]

The deep state, intermeshed foundations, the UN, impact imperialists, philanthropaths, [88] banksters and ultra-wealthy “Zionaires”…

These are presumably the players involved in the “Global Governance” which the Ford Foundation promotes in a special section of its website: “Around the world, we seek to engage with critical stakeholders and partners in government, civil society, private sector and philanthropy to promote the idea of a global community with shared, concrete and cooperative problem-solving approaches and capabilities”. [89]

As US comedian and social critic George Carlin famously warned us: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”. [90]

[Audio version]

[1] https://www.fordfoundation.org/about/people/darren-walker/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Foundation
[3] Ibid.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_The_Dearborn_Independent
[5] https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Ford_Foundation
[6] https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Ford_Foundation
[7] Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Grant Books, 2000), p. 139.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Richard Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New York: Yale University Press, 1996), cit. Saunders, p. 139.
[11] Saunders, p. 141.
[12] Paul Cudenec, ‘Power and corruption: the public-private imperial mafia’. https://winteroak.org.uk/2024/05/15/power-and-corruption-the-public-private-imperial-mafia/
[13] Paul Cudenec, The Global Gang Running Our World and Ruining Our Lives (2025), pp. 201-02. https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/the-global-gang-web.pdf
[14] Saunders, p. 142.
[15] Saunders, p. 312.
[16] Saunders, p. 358.
[17] Saunders, p. 412.
[18]

Dr Ferdinand Santos III

Sep 1

Thanks very well researched. Seems that the FF et al are simply organs of the CIA-DoD-CFR-Deep State. The 'philanthropic' equivalent of USAID.

Expand full comment

Red Pill Poet

Sep 1Edited

I'm still dizzy from taking in all the connections. Talk about taking one for the team … I think I'd work up a nasty migraine writing this one. Which is why it's all the more appreciated!

1 reply

22 more comments...

Paul Cudenec

The Ford Foundation: a fork-tongued global mafia front

Discussion about this post