Calvin Sims is the President and CEO of International House, where he is responsible for the overall management of the New York non-profit program and residence center, founded in 1924 by the Rockefeller and Dodge families, with a mission to promote cross cultural understanding and peace and prepare world leaders.
He annually assembles a community of over 800 graduate students, visiting scholars, trainees, and interns from approximately 100 countries. He fosters a vibrant intellectual community designing a next-generation strategic plan that recognizes the evolving landscape for higher education globally.
A cross-sector leader with more than 20 years of experience in journalism, philanthropy and international affairs, Sims served as Program Officer for the Ford Foundation from 2007-2013, focusing on the development of a free and responsible press worldwide. His work helped foster new and innovative models of reporting, disseminating and financing news, with a concentration on social justice issues, diversity of voices, standards and ethics, and press freedoms.
Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Sims spent 20 years at The New York Times, where he was a director, producer and foreign correspondent and played a central role in the newspaper's expansion into television, documentaries and the Web. He anchored the Times's nightly television news program, hosted a weekly podcast on foreign affairs and produced an acclaimed documentary for PBS on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia. As a foreign correspondent, Sims was based in Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Seoul and Jakarta.
A native of California, Sims is a 1985 graduate of Yale University and has held the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Ferris Professorship of Journalism at Princeton University. Sims’ international experience has included conducting workshops and cultural exchange programs for journalists in Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of an effort by American University and the U.S. State Department to resolve historical conflicts. He speaks Spanish and conversational Japanese.
