Alison Bernstein

Alison Ricky Bernstein (June 8, 1947, Brooklyn – June 30, 2016) was an American historian, and program officer with the Ford Foundation. She was an expert on Native Americans, as well as an advocate for social justice, improvement of higher education and women's studies.

Early life and education Alison Bernstein was born on June 8, 1947, in Brooklyn and grew up in Roslyn Heights, New York. She was born as an only child into a Russian-Jewish family.

She graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Vassar College in 1969. During her undergraduate studies, she was active in campus politics. Bernstein served as the president of her freshman class, and she was a member of Vassar Debate Club, the Student Judicial Committee, and the Young Democrats. After graduation, at the age of 22, she became the youngest person named to Vassar's board of trustees.

Career After obtaining her master's degree in 1970, Bernstein started teaching at Staten Island Community College, and in 1974 got a job at the federal Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education in Washington, D.C. In 1980, she left the fund to serve for two years as a dean at Sangamon State University, which was later acquired by the University of Illinois at Springfield. In 1982, she started her career in the Ford Foundation, where she was overseeing other grantmakers for the foundation's Education, Creativity and Free Expression Program. Bernstein worked at the Ford Foundation until 2010, with the exception of two years from 1990 to 1992, when she took a short leave in order to become an Associate Dean at Princeton. She finished her career as a Director of the Institute for Women's Leadership at Rutgers University, where she served from 2011 until her death in 2016.

At the Ford Foundation, she started a large number of initiatives that benefited historically underrepresented groups.