Stephen B. Heintz is President and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a private family foundation with an endowment of approximately $1.2 billion that advances social change for a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. In 2010, he set an ambitious path to align investment of the Fund’s financial assets with its mission, resulting in its 2014 decision to divest from fossil fuels and establishing the RBF as a leader in the Divest-Invest movement. Heintz, who began his professional life in public service for the state of Connecticut, has devoted his career to strengthening democratic culture and institutions to better serve citizens.
Before joining the RBF in 2001, Heintz co-founded and served as President of Dēmos, a public policy organization that works to reduce political and economic inequality and to broaden citizen engagement in American democracy. As Co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences national Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship in the 21st Century, he co-authored the report Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century. Heintz served as Executive Vice President and COO for the EastWest Institute during the 1990s. In 2002, he led the RBF’s joint initiative with the UN Association of the USA to open a Track II dialogue that helped lay the groundwork for the Iran nuclear deal. In 2007, Heintz convened a meeting of the Kosovo Unity Team and prominent global diplomatic figures at the Fund’s Pocantico Center, resulting in the Pocantico Declaration that set a path for the Kosovo independence process.
Heintz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. He chairs the board of the Quincy Institute and serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group and the Rockefeller Archive Center. He is the recipient of the Council on Foundations 2018 Distinguished Service Award.