Wallis Annenberg
Wallis Annenberg is the Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation.
Based in Los Angeles, Wallis is a visionary who strives to improve the well-being of people and communities throughout the world. She has spent much of her life focused on philanthropy and is dedicated to education; communications; arts and culture; medical research; animal welfare; social justice and environmental stewardship. Her keen vision for philanthropy furthers the core values of the Foundation -- openness, accessibility, fairness and relationship building.
Under Wallis' leadership, the Los Angeles office of the Foundation has given more than a quarter billion dollars to over 500 organizations. Complementing this wide and high impact grantmaking are special projects and initiatives, which are pushing the boundaries of traditional philanthropy while serving the Los Angeles community.
Wallis' commitment to building community space can been seen through the creation of the Annenberg Community Beach House located on the grounds of the former Marion Davies estate at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, the innovative Universally Accessible Treehouse project in Torrance, California and The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts in the historic Beverly Hills Post Office. To strengthen the nonprofit community, executive leadership training is offered several times a year free of charge through the Annenberg Leadership Seminar. The Foundation recently opened the Annenberg Space for Photography, a state-of-the-art photographic print and digital gallery, constructed on the site of the former Shubert Theater in Century City.
Wallis is the longest serving Trustee at the University of Southern California and has been honored by numerous organizations such as the Americans for the Arts, the Shoah Foundation, the House Ear Institute and the California African American Museum.
She serves on a number of Boards including the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education's Board of Councilors; the California Science Center; the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County; the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Click here to read a November 2, 2013 article by Deborah Vankin in the Los Angeles Times regarding Wallis' extraordinary philanthropic contributions in Southern California and beyond.
