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James Canales, MA ’89, has stepped down as chief executive of the San Francisco-based James Irvine Foundation to embrace a new adventure in another city by a bay. In May, he becomes the first president of the Barr Foundation, a philanthropy in Boston on the verge of national and international expansion.

For more than a decade, Canales led the Irvine Foundation, one of California’s largest state funders and a significant backer of the Linked Learning initiative. He celebrated his 20^th year with Irvine last year and served in varying capacities prior to his promotion in 2003. His last day was February 14.

“It has been an enormous privilege to serve as Irvine’s President and CEO,” Canales said in a statement. “I have had the pleasure of working with many talented and dedicated partners both within and outside of the Foundation; the honor of building upon a legacy of excellence and service for which Irvine has been well known; and the joy of observing the progress we have made toward our mission of expanding opportunity for the people of California.”

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During his tenure, Canales earned a reputation among his peers in philanthropy, as well as among nonprofit leaders, for his commitment to excellence, accountability and transparency.

Paul Brest, former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and an emeritus law professor at Stanford, said, "Jim's collaborative style, his focus on achieving ambitious outcomes, and his willingness to acknowledge the failures that inevitably accompany ambitious philanthropy made the Irvine Foundation a true leader in the field.”

An alum of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, Canales taught high school English and directed admissions and financial aid at San Francisco’s University High School for five years before joining Irvine in 1993. He spoke with the GSE shortly after his move to Boston in mid-February.

“Even though I have not been in the classroom for 20 years, I very much fashion myself a teacher,” he said. “I think that many of the skills I learned at Stanford and then applied as a classroom teacher are skills that I bring into running, coming up on, two foundations—in terms of knowing how to work with a broad cross-section of people, how to help people see opportunities that might be ahead of them, and how to synthesize themes you pick up from different places. I definitely think that many of the skills I learned as a teacher are ones that I apply in my day-to-day work, so I have a very fond connection to the Graduate School of Education and to Stanford.”

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Under Canales’ leadership, the Irvine Foundation focused its giving on youth, the arts and California democracy. In 2006, Irvine launched Linked Learning, a statewide initiative aimed at making education relevant to all youth, especially those traditionally underserved. The program integrates rigorous academics with real-world career learning and workplace experiences in such fields as engineering, health care, performing arts and law. Support for the model is growing among educators and school leaders, and the California Department of Education is now expanding it from nine pilot school districts to 63 districts and county offices of education.  

“It has really been exciting to have been part of the Linked Learning team in the last number of years,” said Canales. “We participated in helping build a collective definition of what we mean by Linked Learning, and brought together diverse partners—schools, the business community, researchers, practitioners, educators, funders—to figure out how we could build and advance this field.”

Canales referred to new findings that show early evidence of the benefits of the Linked Learning model.  Researchers from SRI International found that Linked Learning students are earning more credits in the first two years of high school, completing more of the course requirements they need for college eligibility, and reporting greater confidence in their life and career skills than their peers.

“Linked Learning as high school education reform is actually working. That’s what excites me the most because that’s the kind of impact we’re looking for,” he said.

Expanding Barr’s Impact Beyond Boston

Canales, who will serve as the Barr Foundation’s third trustee as well as president, expressed excitement about the opportunity to leverage his 20 years of experience in philanthropy to help shape Barr’s future. The foundation is contemplating growth and expansion regionally, nationally and internationally.  

Known as one of the largest family foundations in New England, the Barr Foundation has focused most of its giving to Boston-area programs on public education, climate change, and arts and culture, but has started expanding its reach with a pilot program in global giving.  

Its education program currently seeks to eliminate achievement gaps in Boston Public Schools through three areas: helping launch effective public schools and supporting school turnarounds, ensuring that children who enter school are ready to learn and are reading proficiently by third grade and strengthening efforts to improve Boston’s afterschool and summer youth programs.

“In my conversations with trustees Barbara and Amos Hostetter, it became very clear to me that they are really thinking about how to take the Barr Foundation to its next level of impact: what are the possible opportunities for growth and expansion both regionally and nationally; how they might take the very good work they have done in arts, education, and climate change to another level; and how they might explore other potential areas of engagement for the foundation,” said Canales. “It’s a compelling opportunity to work for people who are not only incredibly generous and dedicated but also are really engaged in an exciting way, given their knowledge of the region and their personal commitment to it.”

Serendipity and Stanford

Newly settled in Boston, Canales and his partner, the physician Jim McCann, are enjoying some time off for overseas travel and to become acquainted with their new hometown. And while he looks forward to ramping up in his new position with Barr starting May 12, Canales says he is committed to supporting his alma mater from miles away. Long active with The Farm and a former board chair of the Stanford Alumni Association, he has served as a Stanford trustee since 2006 and he has two years remaining in his term.

“Even though I will be a little further from campus, I am hoping I will be able to sustain my level of involvement with Stanford, which holds, as you can imagine, a very special place in my heart,” he says.

As Canales prepares for his next professional challenge, he still finds links between his present work and his STEP experience more than two decades ago.

“Irvine and Barr are two foundations that are deeply committed to expanding educational opportunity and that really takes me right back to why I got into teaching,” said Canales. “I don’t know if I was sitting in a classroom in Cubberley thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I’ll become a foundation president, at some point in my career’—that was certainly not the thought—but if serendipity takes you to certain directions, it’s nice that it still feels authentically connected to why I pursued an education degree in the first place.”

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