OSI-Baltimore Director to Serve as Acting Executive Director for U.S. Programs at Open Society Foundations

BALTIMORE–Diana Morris, director of OSI-Baltimore, will serve as acting executive director for U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations, beginning May 1. U.S. Programs’ current director Ann Beeson is leaving Open Society to pursue new opportunities working with the arts, culture and social change in her home state of Texas.

During the search for the new director of U.S. Programs, Morris will continue to retain her position as director in Baltimore, splitting her time between Baltimore and New York. While Morris is in New York, Monique Dixon, director of juvenile and criminal justice at OSI-Baltimore, will serve as deputy director of programs in Baltimore.

For the last few years, U.S. Programs has been looking to expand its work on the city and state level because so many issues – including juvenile and criminal justice, access to addiction treatment, and education – are handled at the state and local levels.

As an experienced grantmaking executive, who has worked with the Open Society Foundations for 14 years, Morris will bring lessons learned from Baltimore and fulfill the important role of the Baltimore office as a social justice laboratory. As always, OSI-Baltimore will be able to tap into its New York colleagues’ expertise as it moves ahead with its locally based work.

"The appointment of Diana Morris demonstrates the Open Society Foundation's high regard for the accomplishments and ongoing work of OSI-Baltimore," said Bill Clarke, Chair of the OSI-Baltimore Advisory Board.

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Open Society Institute-Baltimore was started in 1998 by philanthropist George Soros as a laboratory to better understand and solve the most intractable problems facing urban America. OSI-Baltimore is a private operating foundation that focuses its work exclusively on the root causes of three intertwined problems – drug addiction, an over-reliance on incarceration and the obstacles that keep youth from succeeding inside and outside of the classroom. OSI-Baltimore also sponsors the Baltimore Community Fellows, now more than 100 members strong, who work to create opportunity and bring justice to people in the city’s most underserved neighborhoods. The office is part of the Open Society Foundations, which aims to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. Working with local communities in more than 70 countries, the Open Society Foundations support justice and human rights, freedom of expression, and access to public health and education.