Carter Stewart

Carter Stewart is executive vice president for programs at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  He works closely with the Foundation's president, board, and staff to shape the Foundation's funding priorities and programmatic direction.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Mr. Stewart served as a managing director of the venture philanthropy Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation (DRK) where he played a lead role in sourcing new investments and grantees—primarily early-stage, justice-oriented organizations—and then worked closely with those organizations on strategy, scaling, organizational capacity building, and leadership development.

In addition to his philanthropic work, Mr. Stewart held academic positions at the Ohio State University in law and public policy. Specifically, from 2018 to 2021, Mr. Stewart taught "Lawyers as Leaders" at the Moritz College of Law, and he was the lead investigator and coauthor of a research evaluation of the City of Columbus, Ohio's response to the 2020 summer protests. In the latter role, he worked under the auspices of the Ohio State University's John Glenn College of Public Affairs to interview protestors and police officers, analyze public data on policing, and make recommendations for policy changes based upon the input of an expert advisory council.

From 2009 to 2016, Mr. Stewart served as the presidentially-appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio where he emphasized deterrence, crime prevention, and alternatives to incarceration. He created the district's first community outreach position and established a community leadership group geared towards building trust and improving communication between the public and law enforcement.  Mr. Stewart also served on the attorney general's advisory committee and chaired a group of US attorneys who examined racial inequities in the federal criminal justice system. Mr. Stewart previously worked as an assistant US attorney in San Jose, CA, and he was a litigator at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP in Columbus, OH and Bingham McCutchen LLP in San Francisco, CA.

Mr. Stewart received a JD degree from Harvard Law School, holds an MA in education policy from Columbia University, and a BA in political science from Stanford University.

Mr. Stewart has served on the boards of several arts-related organizations, including the Contemporary American Theater Company and the Joyce Foundation. He currently is a trustee for the Marshall Project, Nantucket Film Festival, Nantucket Historical Association, and the Atlantic Foundation.