Daniel Reid has been named the executive director of the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, while Courtney Hodell has been appointed director of the Whiting Writers' Awards. The appointments,announced by president of the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Antonia M. Grumbach, go into effect on November 1.
Reid is currently the director of strategic planning at the CUNY Institute for Education Policy. He will succeed Kellye Rosenheim, who joined the Foundation in 1990. Hodell, formerly executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, will replace Barbara Bristol, who has run the Whiting Writers’ Awards for 16 years.
Grumbach commented that the appointment of Hodell, who edited and published major titles such as The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal and Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, renews the Foundation's longtime commitment to writers, and will add to the success of the Writer's Awards.
“With her distinguished editorial career and extensive work with writers in many genres—including literary fiction, memoir and biography, narrative nonfiction, cultural history, and psychology—Courtney Hodell brings to the Foundation a wealth of experience to enhance both the program and the experience of our award recipients," said Grumbach.
Established in 1985, the annual awards grant 10 emerging writers $50,000 each. Past winners include Lydia Davis, Jeffrey Eugenides, Adam Johnson, Tony Kushner, Bruce Norris, Colson Whitehead, and Tobias Wolff.
“For almost three decades the Whiting Writers’ Award has shown great prescience in finding talented writers at the critical early stage of their careers and giving them the freedom to be bold in their writing," said Hodell. "It will be a challenge and a privilege to carry this important work forward.”
Grumbach also noted that in Reid the Foundation found “a leader whose enthusiasm for the humanities will guide the Foundation in creating grants to support the humanities in new ways and to engage the public in that support. We believe this is especially important at a moment in history when there is widespread skepticism about their importance.”
Reid, a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School, worked as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co. running projects in the social and for-profit sectors. He has also worked, as a consultant, with UNESCO on its endangered languages program and with the Illinois Humanities Council to develop plans for a statewide sustainable humanities infrastructure. At CUNY, Reid has been developing programming for the new CUNY Institute for Education Policy at Roosevelt House, which launched in May of this year.
“Whiting has a remarkable history of identifying and nurturing promising talent in both the arts and the humanities, and I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to lead the Foundation in the exciting work ahead,“ Reid said.
The Whiting Foundation, which began with a $10 million bequest from the estate of Flora Ettlinger Whiting, has granted more than $50 million to writers and humanities scholars over its 40-year history.
