Daniel R. Porterfield

Daniel R. Porterfield joined the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation as CEO in July 2026. His early priorities include supporting Cooke Scholars and Alums, showcasing the Foundation’s people and partners, and working to expand educational opportunity at every level.

Porterfield brings years of leadership at the intersection of education, opportunity, and civil society. A lifelong educator and former college president, he is the author of the 2024 book, Mindset Matters: The Power of College to Activate Lifelong Growth.

Prior to joining the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, from 2018-2026, Porterfield served as president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a global non-profit that drives change by fostering dialogue, developing leaders, facilitating solutions, and curating major convenings such as the Aspen Ideas Festival. Porterfield emphasized advancing economic opportunity, tackling climate change, strengthening education, building social trust, and supporting grassroots leaders and working families. He led Aspen’s work to establish the Center for Rising Generations, which develops the leadership of youth and young adults, and the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies.

From 2011-2018, Porterfield served as president of Franklin & Marshall College. Under his leadership, F&M tripled its incoming low-income students, developed a signature approach to post-graduate success, and created the Susan and Benjamin Winter Center for Visual Arts. In 2016, Porterfield co-led the founding of the American Talent Initiative through which 130 top colleges and universities have increased their collective enrollment of low-income students by more than 74,000 in 2025.  Hundreds of Jack Kent Cooke Scholars attend these institutions.

From 1996-2011, Porterfield served as an English professor, faculty-in-residence, and senior vice president for strategic development at Georgetown University, where he was an award-winning English professor and lived on campus for eight years with his family as faculty-in-residence. At Georgetown, Porterfield founded impactful programs serving immigrant children, court-supervised youth, DC Public School students, and Cristo Rey Network students.

Porterfield currently serves as Chair of the National Board of Directors of Teach For America and is a trustee of American University. He is a former trustee of the College Board, the Ed Trust, Colorado College, the Cristo Rey Network, and the Lenfest College Scholarship Foundation, which he chaired.

In 2016, he was named a White House Champion of Change for College Opportunity. He is a former Rhodes Scholar and Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, has received seven honorary degrees, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Porterfield earned his BA degrees from Georgetown University and Oxford University, and his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is married to Karen A. Herrling, a policy expert with Futures Without Violence. They have three adult children.