Dear Grantees and Partners:

In 2023, the Board of the Heising-Simons Foundation welcomed a new President and CEO—its first such change in more than a decade. Sushma brings over two decades of experience launching, scaling, and leading social justice and philanthropic programs and collaboratives, including helping build capabilities of grassroots human rights organizations and their leaders.

Under this shared leadership, we embarked on a journey to reflect on the nature of the problems we’re trying to tackle, and envision bold solutions—whether to protect vulnerable communities from the worst impacts of climate change, to ensure high-quality early education and care to enable families and children to thrive, to expand the frontiers of scientific knowledge about our universe, or to reimagine a society where people are free to live whole, safe, and dignified lives.

Much remains the same at the Foundation despite such a significant change—our enduring commitments to meeting the educational needs of our youngest learners, addressing the effects of climate change and ushering a clean energy future, advancing the frontiers of scientific research about our universe, and promoting human rights for all. Our investments in leading organizations has been complemented by our support to individuals—whether through the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, which advances professional opportunities in planetary astronomy, or the American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which champions journalists reporting on underrepresented communities.

But beyond these long-standing commitments, the Foundation also embarked on new areas of work in 2023, including launching a new and critical initiative on technology and society, and participating in a collaboration to support Black-led social movements through the Democracy Frontlines Fund.

Looking back on 2023, we remain grateful and inspired by our grantees and partners, and their steadfast commitment to unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities on some of the most pressing issues of our time. You’ll see just a few of the examples of knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities from that year highlighted in this report.

With gratitude,

Liz Simons
Mark Heising
Caitlin Heising
Sushma Raman