Candid names Ann Mei Chang as new CEO

Trailblazer Ann Mei Chang chosen to guide the country’s most comprehensive source of data tools on nonprofits, foundations, and grants. 

Candid’s board of trustees today announced the selection of Ann Mei Chang as the organization’s new chief executive officer. Ann Mei is a leading expert on social innovation with global experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. She will begin serving in this role on October 4, 2021, overlapping with current leader Bradford K. Smith through the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition.

As a knowledge-driven nonprofit with 200+ employees, including one of the largest teams of data scientists and programmers in the social sector, Candid gets people the information they need to address society’s critical challenges. Ann Mei will lead Candid in harnessing the precision of data, the power of technology, and the compassion of the social sector to increase our collective ability to do good during this unprecedented time of disruption and need.

“Ann Mei is a strategist, problem-solver, and collaborator who is ideally suited to lead Candid in achieving its ambitious 2030 vision,” said T. Sylvester John, chair of Candid’s board of trustees and head of the search committee. “Her extraordinary success in the tech industry and international development, passion for Candid’s mission, and focus on what matters in people’s lives made her the unanimous choice for the role. We are delighted to have Ann Mei guide us as we live our values of being driven, direct, accessible, curious, and inclusive.”

The author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good, Ann Mei served as chief innovation officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the first executive director of its U.S. Global Development Lab. In addition, she was chief innovation officer for Pete for America, chief innovation officer at Mercy Corps, and senior advisor for women and technology at the U.S. Department of State.

Prior to her work in the public and social sectors, Ann Mei was a seasoned technology executive, with more than 20 years of experience at Google, Apple, and Intuit, as well as at a range of startups. As senior engineering director at Google, she led worldwide engineering for mobile applications and services, with a mission to bring the next billion people online. She earned a B.S. in computer science from Stanford University and is a member of the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellows class of 2011.

Ann Mei has been recognized as one of the “Women in the World: 125 Women of Impact” by Newsweek/The Daily Beast in 2013, “23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech” by Business Insider in 2019, and “20 Top LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurs, Executives and Thought Leaders” by Global Shakers in 2019.

“Candid plays such an important role as the information infrastructure that supports mission-driven work in the U.S. and around the world. I am thrilled by the opportunity to lead an organization I admire deeply,” said Ann Mei. “I look forward to listening to and learning about the needs of Candid’s constituents to help increase the organization’s scale and impact.”