Barbara Dyer

Barbara Dyer is President & CEO of The Hitachi Foundation, a senior advisor in the formulation and implementation of Hitachi’s North American CSR strategy. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and is Executive Director of the Good Companies Good Jobs Initiative.

The Hitachi Foundation, established by Hitachi in 1985, is an expression of the company’s commitment to global corporate citizenship. Ms. Dyer has sharpened the Foundation’s focus on the role of business in society, with a particular emphasis on the role of business in ameliorating poverty in America. Under Ms. Dyer’s leadership the Foundation has been an influential force in the broader CSR field and has been instrumental in shaping two major national collaborative philanthropic initiatives – Jobs to Careers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the United States Department of Labor; and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. In 2010, Jobs to Careers received the Critical Impact Award and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions received Distinguished Grantmaker of the Year for Collaboration, the two highest honors proffered by the Council on Foundations. 

Ms. Dyer is a Trustee of Clark University and a member the American University School of Public Affairs Dean’s Advisory Council. She served as co-founder and first Chair of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. She is a member of the Council on Foundations Corporate Committee. She was an inaugural member of the More for Mission Leadership Committee.  She also serves as a member of the Points of Light/Hands-On Network Corporate Advisory Council.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Ms. Dyer had an extensive career in public policy as co-founder of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Alliance for Redesigning Government, Deputy Executive Director and Director of Policy Studies with the National Governors’ Association affiliate, the Council of Governors’ Policy Advisors, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior in the Carter Administration, and Deputy Executive Director of the Western Regional Office of the Council of State Governments.  She has also been executive director of a community nonprofit organization and a high school teacher.

She is a graduate of Clark University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government.