Dear Friends of Open Society:

I am writing to share that Binaifer Nowrojee has been appointed the new president of the Open Society Foundations. 

Our current president Mark Malloch-Brown and I, together with our Board of Directors, have decided that the moment has arrived for Mark to hand over the leadership of Open Society to a new team. The Board has unanimously named Binaifer Nowrojee, a member of our Executive Leadership team, as Mark’s successor.  

Binaifer will be well known to many of our partners and friends, as well as to our staff: a human rights lawyer who spent a decade at Human Rights Watch, Binaifer joined the Foundations in 2004. She is Kenyan, where she has lived and worked, as well as in Tanzania, Singapore, the UK, and the United States. At Open Society, her roles have included heading our work in both Africa and in Asia; she has worked closely with Mark through this period of organizational transformation.  

I am forever grateful to Mark for the work he has done to make this transition possible over the past three years. He is someone I have known my entire life, whose life has overlapped with Open Society and my father in many ventures. He has been a mentor in many fields to me. I congratulate him today from the bottom of my heart on accomplishing what few would have been able to pull off.  

In a note to staff, Binaifer rightly described herself as someone who came with a deep-seated belief in the transformative power of the Foundations’ work, urging a redoubling of our commitment to advance and promote human rights with our partners and the broader world. I have firsthand experience of seeing her in action, in some very difficult circumstances. She is a leader, who cares deeply about the people she works with. 

Binaifer embodies the spirit of Open Society, past and present. I am confident she will ably lead the Foundations into the challenging next phase of our work.   

Warmest regards,

Alex Soros
Chair of the Board of Directors
Open Society Foundations