Margaret is the senior program advisor for the Foundation’s Presidential Initiatives: Imagining Freedom, the Monuments Project, and Puerto Rico. She collaborates closely with the Presidential Initiatives staff and grantees on all aspects of the office’s grantmaking, with a focus on enhancing grantee and field engagement, supporting strategic clarity, and ensuring informed learning and impact.

Margaret has supported public funding and grantmaking for the Arts and other forms of creative expression for 20 years. Most recently, she led the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program investments in the Arts, media and journalism in the United States, and documentary film across the U.S. and nine international regions. Margaret also stewarded New York City’s public funding for the Arts and cultural sector, as general counsel and deputy commissioner, where she devised new grantmaking frameworks and creative solutions for affordable space for artists.

Prior to her work in philanthropy, Margaret served as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and as legislative counsel to New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Criminal Justice, in roles that advanced civil rights legislation, criminal justice reforms and alternatives to incarceration.

Margaret’s passion for the Arts is marked by prior service on the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association; board membership on the Theater Development Fund; and recently, as an Advisor to SMU’s Data Arts center, which provides evidence based insights on the U.S. arts and cultural sector.

Margaret earned her juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center and her bachelor of arts degree from Barnard College, majoring in American History and Dance.