Vartan Gregorian President, Carnegie Corporation of New York New York, New York

Vartan Gregorian is the twelfth president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grant-making institution founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. The pledge Mr. Gregorian made early in life to become “a person of learning and consequence,” has served him well. Born to Armenian parents in Tabriz, Iran in 1934, Mr. Gregorian came to the United States to attend Stanford University in 1956 and began a prestigious career in academia.

Mr. Gregorian joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1972 and was appointed Tarzian Professor of History and professor of South Asian history. He was founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 and four years later became its twenty-third provost until 1981. As president of the New York Public Library from 1981 to 1989, Mr. Gregorian is credited with changing the direction of the institution and bringing the library back from the brink of bankruptcy. In 1989, Mr. Gregorian was named president of Brown University where he increased the prominence of the university, tripling the university’s endowment and diversifying the student body. Today, Mr. Gregorian serves on the boards of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art.