Pomona College Dean Named to OverseeMacArthur’s ‘Genius’ Grants

New job: Cecilia Conrad, 57, will take over in January as director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s fellows program, informally known as the “genius” awards. Since 1981, the Chicago foundation has provided 850 “no strings attached” grants, currently of $500,000 each, to people pursuing creative work in the arts, sciences, and other disciplines.

Background: The new program director is an economist and the dean of Pomona College, whose academic research has focused on economic inequality. She has also held faculty jobs at Duke University and Barnard College.

Education: Ms. Conrad received a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford.

Why she wanted the job: It sounded “like probably one of the coolest jobs in the country,” says Ms. Conrad, who once helped select MacArthur fellows.

Potential impact: Ms. Conrad will join MacArthur as it concludes an evaluation of the “genius” program. It’s too early to say how the program might change.

Biggest challenges: Adjusting to the Chicago winters, and to a job where her relationship to beneficiaries is more distant than a dean’s with students.

Salary: She declined to disclose it.

What she’s reading: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, by William J. Bernstein, and The Barbarian Nurseries, by Héctor Tobar, which is assigned to this year’s freshman class at Pomona.