People At A Glance Archive

2018-19 CASBS faculty fellow

Paul Brest is Former Dean and Professor Emeritus (active), at Stanford Law School, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and co-director of the Stanford Law and Policy Lab. He was president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation from 2000-2012. He was a CASBS fellow in 1983-84 and served on the CASBS board of directors from 2009-2018, part of that time as board chair.

He is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Guide to Smart Philanthropy (2008); Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (2010); and articles on constitutional law, philanthropy, and impact investing. His current courses include Problem Solving for Public Policy and Social Change, Measuring and Improving Social Impact, and Advanced Topics in Philanthropy and Impact Investing. He also is the instructor in an online course, Essentials of Nonprofit Strategy, offered by Philanthropy University.

Brest is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary degrees from Northwestern University School of Law and Swarthmore College. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1969, he clerked for Judge Bailey Aldrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice John M. Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court, and did civil rights litigation with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Mississippi.

Quote about CASBS

"While retaining the best of the Center’s tradition of serendipitous outcomes of interactions among a diverse group of scholars, CASBS is now deploying its unique convening power to address society’s most pressing issues."

Personal factoid

As a fellow in 1983, he had the first personal computer at the Center.

Member, CASBS Board of Directors

Former CASBS fellow (2013-14) Heather Munroe-Blum currently serves as Chairperson of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and is Principal (President) Emerita of McGill University. She is a Director of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Chair of RBC's Corporate Governance Committee; Director, of CGI Group; and, Director and Vice-Chair of the Gairdner Foundation. She is a member of the Board of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) of Stanford University, and, the Trilateral Commission. Munroe-Blum became the 16th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University in 2003 and served for over a decade as the first woman in this role. A distinguished scholar in the fields of psychiatric epidemiology and public policy, and an accomplished administrator, Munroe-Blum was a member of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and Professor in its Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health. Prior to this, she served as Professor and Vice-President (Research and International Relations) at the University of Toronto.

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