Ben: Heather, thank you for joining us in Templeton Ideas.

Heather: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ben: This is your first time on the podcast? Yes. And we’re now over 50 episodes deep.

Heather: I’m super proud of Templeton Ideas podcast. I’m super proud of Templeton Ideas, the multimedia platform that you can find on templeton.org. And it’s great. I feel highly honored to be a guest, given all the other guests you’ve had on the show.

Ben: We’re here today to talk about your time at JTF and all that you’ve seen and done and learned, and looking into the future as well. So, we’re gonna start at back at the beginning. We’re now in 2025. Your tenure at JTF as the president began 10 years ago. So, take us back to the beginning. What was JTF like when you began as president?

Heather: JTF was a great organization. When I became president in 2015, we had a great team, slightly larger than we have now, and we were funding a lot of different projects across many different disciplines, including philosophy and theology. And we were well positioned for future success.

So, I came into an organization that was well organized, operating well, and had a clear sense of its philanthropic mandate.

Ben: What was a moment from those early days that makes you smile?

Heather: When I became president, our human resources team organized lunches for me with team members from across the organization.

So, they selected people from different departments, and that was really fun to get to know people and for different colleagues to get to know each other. I learned a lot about the stories of people working at JTF, and there was one colleague in particular who told me about a time when she first joined the foundation. And it was announced that my grandfather, sir John Templeton, would be visiting the foundation. He didn’t want to create an organization with a lot of staff. So, they told her not to come to work because they didn’t want him to see that the size of the team was increasing.

And I just thought that was characteristic of him, and also funny and great that she was still with us after all those years of having to kinda hide under her desk when my grandfather came around to visit.

Ben: And since you brought up Sir John, I wanna take it even further back what was your first impression of the John Templeton Foundation?

Heather: Well, the foundation was created in 1987. I was probably just around 11 years old. Actually, the first offices of the foundation were located in my parents’ garage. They had an apartment over their garage. So, what I remember is the first executive director and some of the people that she hired to join her in trying to carry out this philanthropic mandate as it was expressed at that time, and I would come home from sports practices. Uh, they would be leaving the office to, to go home. So honestly, that’s my first memory. I didn’t really have a great sense of what the foundation was doing, probably until college, and then certainly after college.

Ben: Mm-hmm.

Heather: Mm-hmm.

Ben: So, when you took over in 2015, what were some of the early challenges that you faced?

Heather: First and foremost, we were focused on a smooth transition. I took over at a time when my father had passed away. He had been fighting cancer for several years, but his moment of passing and leaving the office came rather quickly. So, a smooth transition. At the same time, I knew that we were going to have to implement a new funding model.

I thought that it would be best for the foundation over time to pay out at a slightly lower level than my father was paying out. And so that was a challenge. And then the third challenge and opportunity was to think about how to leverage all the successes to date for the future. I knew it wasn’t going to be business as usual.

We were gonna do something different. To grow, you have to do something different. But I didn’t at that time know what the course would be or what paths we would take. So, I saw that then and now as both a challenge and an opportunity.

Ben: And when your dad passed, he had been the first and the only president of the foundation up to that point?

Heather: That’s correct, yes. People think Sir John Templeton was the president, but he was chair my father served as president and CEO from its inception.

Ben: And for the listeners, when did Sir John Templeton pass and what, what did that mean for the foundation?

Heather: He passed in 2008. The most significant impact to the foundation was that it became larger.

So, in 2008, the foundation was right around a billion dollars, and between 2008 and 2012, it grew to be just under $3 billion. So that was the most significant change. My grandfather had stepped down as chair about two years prior, and the foundation was already positioned for leadership and direction without him making decisions or providing guidance.

Ben: So now we’re in 2015, you’ve taken over, you’ve navigated this transition. What do you think the narrative is? What is the arc over the decade that you’ve been the president of the John Templeton Foundation?

Heather: I would describe our story over the last 10 years as refining our mission and purpose.

So, when I became president, we had been in operation for several years. We had expanded a great deal from

Ben: no longer in the garage,

Heather: No longer in the garage. We had moved offices two times. We had a team of about 83, so we were a substantial organization. In 2017, we launched a new website, implemented a new logo, and included a new mission statement at that time, which helped to further refine what we did and why it mattered.

But that was just an initial step. So, in 2021, when we brought on some new leadership for our communications team, we updated the mission statement and developed a purpose statement again. Those concepts and ideas were further refined in 2024, and where we landed in 2024, I think crystallizes who we are, what we do, and why it matters.

So we describe our work as investing in interdisciplinary research and catalyzing conversations that inspire awe and wonder. That’s what we do. Why does it matter? We are trying to create a world where people are curious about the wonders of the universe, free to pursue lives of purpose and meaning, and motivated by great and selfless love. Those words were actually some of the words we were using in 2017, but we brought them back in a way that I found to be more inspirational as well as directional. So, refining that mission, making it clear, is part of our arc and story over the last 10 years.

Ben: We’ve just outlined some pretty big changes and initiatives that you undertook as president. Why don’t you walk us through some of the other new directions that you implemented or embraced as you took over the leadership?

Heather: Countless team members contributed to these efforts, but we launched a major strategic plan in 2018, so I became president in 2015. It took us about three years to land on a strategy, but it was our first attempt to articulate and implement a comprehensive strategy for most of our grant-making activity. And we called it the strategy for science and the big questions that reflected our branding at the time.

It gave us something to talk about in a very clear way. We decided not to do work in certain spaces and to develop new areas of work. So that, in my mind, was a major achievement, and we learned a lot along the way in those five years. I think it’s part of what sets us up so well for the future. The other project that I worked on was re-imagining the Templeton Prize.

It didn’t launch until 2019. Again, a new logo, a new purpose statement, a refined set of criteria of merit, and clarity about the fact that the Templeton Prize is a shared project between the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Templeton Religion Trust. And then we also added a new way of soliciting nominations for the Templeton Prize. So, that was sort of the second major objective where I was very involved. And then the third is just giving the communications team, under new leadership, the freedom to run with ideas, do a brand analysis. What do people appreciate about who we are? Why does it matter to them? What language is gonna be compelling to most of our audiences? And then what’s the infrastructure? And that’s where Templeton Ideas emerged and the podcast came to be.

Ben: I wanna unpack the Templeton Prize a little bit, just because it’s something special and has its own history that people might not know. So, you were re-imagining the Templeton Prize. Great. But what were you re-imagining it from? Can you take us back and, paint the history of the Templeton Prize before you took over?

Heather: Well, the history of the Templeton Prize starts in 1972. The original name was the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. My grandfather changed that name in 2001 to try and focus the attention of nominators and judges on identifying people who were researchers, scientists. The name was changed again in 2008 to just the Templeton Prize and what I inherited when I became president was a, a strong prize program. It was the thing that most people knew about when they were asked about the Templeton Foundation, and

Ben: it was the first thing he did as a charitable activity, right?

Heather: It was his first major philanthropic effort. And when you think about the history of these organizations, the John Templeton Foundation, it starts with the prize, continues with some of his books, and then moves on to the creation of the foundation in 1987.

But our effort in reimagining the prize was to say, we really want to elevate those who engage with science in some way, and then tie it to the spiritual questions, even religious questions that we all have.

Ben: Looking back at the winners, you can see all the different ways in which the Templeton Prize has been celebrated over the years. So, Mother Teresa, the first winner, and then we go through a period of many different inspirational religious leaders. And then there’s political dissident, Alexander Sol Eaton in there. But then more recently, as you pointed out, there are a number of researchers who come into the mix in the early two thousands, and then up to today, we still have that same wonderful balance where in any given year, you don’t know whether it’s going to be a, a world renowned psychologist or a religious leader like we have this year with, uh, the ecumenical patriarch.

Heather: Exactly. I think that’s one of the strengths, and it has been one of the highlights of my time to interact with the wide variety of Templeton Prize laureates who have received the prize.

Ben: You’re somebody who came into the role of president with a keen awareness of what came before you. You had worked with your father, you worked in informal and also formal ways with your grandfather, and you were familiar with their intentions and their values, and their practices.

What sort of values did you carry on from your father and your grandfather?

Heather: Well, I’ll start with my grandfather. He was one of the most open-minded people I knew. And in fact, those who were closest to him and those who worked with him described him that way. So I think I’ve really tried to embrace that and embody his open-mindedness.

It actually took me a while to appreciate how he approached the world. I was raised in the Christian tradition, and there are core beliefs to being a Christian, and my grandfather was really open to the truths and lessons that come from multiple faith traditions. So, after reading his writings and also having friends from different faith traditions, I came to appreciate his perspective and I really tried to bring open-mindedness to the organization, both in what we fund, but in how I operated as a leader internally.

And then my dad had many qualities. He was an extremely hard worker, detail oriented. I think I’ve inherited some of that to a large degree, but he often talked about something internally that he called skeptical stewardship. So, first and foremost, were stewards of a philanthropic mission. That is not our own.

And we’re in the role of trying to assess ideas that come to us, whether that’s an operational change or something related to grant making or even communications. And we have to approach that with clarity of thought, asking questions, testing our assumptions, and not just accepting something because it looks good on the face of it, but looking under the hood and really investigating.

So that’s how we bring stewardship to the fore. You also exercise due diligence and good judgment in the decisions that you make. So, those are the two virtues, open-mindedness and skeptical stewardship.

Ben: Can you spend a moment describing your father? He’s such an important figure in the creation and organization of the John Templeton Foundation.

And while he’s very well known to people who have a history with the foundation that you might not be as widely known today. So, I’d love for you to spend a little time painting a picture of him and who he was and what he thought of the foundation’s vision and mission.

Heather: Thanks for that question. I, my, my father John M. Templeton Jr. is one of the reasons the foundation is what it is today, and I tried to emphasize as I step out of this role that the story of the foundation has to include him. He was a pediatric surgeon, so when I think about my father, he was first and foremost a physician.

Not only that, he taught at a, a medical school, at a teaching hospital. So, he was both a physician who taught others to become physicians. And I just thought of him as a superhero growing up because he could go into the operating rooms, spend long hours, and make an incredible difference in the lives of his patients and their parents and families.

 One of our colleagues used to say that every grant proposal was kind of like a patient. If it wasn’t quite right, dad would try to fix it until it was all healed and better. I love that image. That is how he approached his work. Extremely ethical, deeply kind, very generous, curious, and also really engaged and smart. He read widely, and he brought all of that to the projects and the work that he did at the foundation. He was also innovative. I mean, some of our most successful projects were birthed in his mind and brought forward because of his commitment, like what to them.

Yeah, I think of the Jubilee Center for Character in Virtue, which was at the University of Birmingham, a significant investment that the John Templeton Foundation made in helping to expand research on character, as well as to develop a framework for what good character is and what it looks like in the classroom, as well as in the legal firm and in the hospital.

So, really applying character to many dimensions of life. And then the Constitution Center developed right here in in Philadelphia developed the interactive Constitution, which is still a great tool for anyone, but teachers in particular to come and look at both sides of many of the issues in the constitution.

Dad was really instrumental in working with the Constitution Center to bring that to fruition.

Ben: So, we’ve just been talking about some projects and grants that were cooked up during your dad’s time. Are there any during your tenure that you particularly wanna lift up or that will stay with you?

Heather: So, the first that comes to mind is not just one project, but really all of our work in the area of intellectual humility. And that is research that started before my time, but we continued, we made it a key feature of our strategy, our grant-making strategies during my tenure, that work included funding measures the development of measures for intellectual humility, refining our understanding and definition of intellectual humility, testing ways to cultivate intellectual humility in a variety of settings, and then sharing all of that information as widely as possible. So I, I think that kind of work has personally impacted me and how I look at the world and try to live, but has just been a great success for us and has traction for many years to come.

The second is the Black Hole Initiative. We have funded that project three times now. The first time we funded it, we were the sole funder, and we didn’t know what it would achieve, but we funded it in 2017, I think is maybe when it started. The first image of the black hole was released in 2019. I always say, this is our first above-the-fold grant, uh, that we achieved, but then even better, maybe than all of that is it attracted co-funders. And so now we continue to support the project, but we’re only doing so at 50% of what they need to continue their work.

The third one that I would point to is our long-time relationship with the Pew Charitable Trust. The Pew Research Center in particular, and in my tenure, the John Templeton Foundation approved more grants to the Pew Templeton Religious Futures Project we approved parts 4, 5, 6, 7, and eight. And I love that project because it is a partnership, and I find what comes out of that research on where religion is today, where it is going, is accessible, detailed, robust, and useful. Now it will continue to be useful for the future. So those are three areas, crossing multiple disciplines that are particularly exciting, compelling, important, valuable to me.

Ben: You mentioned in your answer about the Black Hole Initiative that co-funding is a measure of success.

Spend a little time explaining why, because for people either in the grantee world or just listening to this podcast, it may not be intuitive why we care so much about co-funding, and that’s a unique aspect of what the John Templeton Foundation does. So, tell us a little bit about why co-funding is important.

Heather: Our focus on co-funding really starts with my grandfather’s philanthropic vision. I try to say that he left us with what to fund, but he also left us with a lot of instructions about. How to fund, and he valued co-funding for a variety of reasons.

One was that he liked the concept of kind of being a seed investor. You find that innovative researcher support what they’re doing, and then if they’re successful, a measure of that success will be attracting others who want to invest as well. Maybe in a similar way, co-funding reinforces that the investment decision you made in a researcher, or body of work, has credibility because others recognize that it is strong methodologies or that the results are compelling enough. And he was willing to partner with people for some time. He just wanted others to come to the table, and he thought it was a way of both making progress, but also making some investments, allowing others to come and support them so that he could then go on and support other people who hadn’t received funding from the John Templeton Foundation was kind of a multidimensional perspective on his part.

Ben: I’m curious, how has your understanding of the foundation’s mission and vision evolved or deepened?

Heather: It is really been in the past couple of years that I have begun to think or realize how basic science works. We fund basic, fundamental research across different kinds of disciplines, so that means, um, investing in what academics, professors, scholars are doing typically in universities, but not exclusively investing in that work that may not have an immediate application, but over time could lead to some application or some new insight that has incredible promise for all of humankind.

So, I think that in terms of scientific progress, but scientific progress is both incremental and cumulative. So, we invest in small projects. Sometimes we invest in large projects, and philanthropists like to talk about impact. We talk about impact as well. We want our dollars to make a difference. I often talk about our work as making a contribution, so we are funding this small research project, and we hope it’ll produce some results. It may not change the world, but that project. will lead to another project and then that will lead to maybe more researchers working on a similar topic.

And over time, that investment can really lead to a breakthrough. I don’t think I appreciated that as much when I started, and frankly, I’ve only really come to appreciate that in the last couple of years.

Ben: We’re now looking ahead to a new period of leadership at the foundation. We announced recently that Dr. Tim Dalrymple will be taking over as president later this year, later this summer. As the next president is preparing and getting ready for a really big and exciting job, what advice do you have for, well, I’ll make it personal for Tim?

Heather: I have two pieces of advice. One is to continue to expand our networks of grantees. And the second is to build on the past to innovate for the future. So, I know Tim will come in and introduce new, exciting ideas that I would never have thought of. I also hope that he’ll do so along with the rest of the team by looking to the work we’ve done in the past, the solid foundation we have laid as a way to leverage or identify the new opportunities, so look to the past as a way of innovating for the future.

Ben: Now that you’re stepping away, what opportunities or challenges do you see?

Heather: Opportunities I see are to continue to be outward-focused.We have gained a lot of ground really in all of our history, but I think in the last 10 years with respect to building relationships with colleagues in the philanthropic community, as well as reaching out to new institutions and universities, and just demonstrating to the world that we do fund robust research.

So, I think an opportunity for the foundation and for Tim in particular, our next president, is to be out there in the world talking about what we’re doing, learning about what others are doing, and identifying people that we can support or fund or partner with. So, I think that’s one of the great opportunities.

A challenge is to continue to promote the value of philanthropy all around the world and here in the United States. I think it’s significant that my grandfather chose to establish the John Templeton Foundation here in the United States because it was a place where philanthropy was part of who we are as a nation and as a people.

And it, it was thriving in many, many different dimensions.

Ben: Philanthropies going through a moment of challenge and possibly transition. What advice would you give for a philanthropic leader, not specific to JTF, but stepping into a leadership role at any philanthropy in 2025.

Heather: Focus on the stories and the contributions that you’re making to humankind, elevate the ways in which your dollars and your funding change people’s lives for the better. Tell it like a story and make sure the people in communities that are impacted know that story and see the results in our lives.

So, I think there’s more of a communication component to philanthropy than ever before. That’s true across industries and sectors, of course, but it’s an opportunity to leverage those great stories. Without philanthropy, some of the things we take for granted wouldn’t be here. So, the question is, what are the things we wanna take for granted in the future? Because philanthropy made a difference in bringing those to fruition, and then. There are many different forms of philanthropy. There’s the institutional philanthropy that we represent. There are individual philanthropists, there are community foundations. I mean, there’s just an opportunity to tell the story and look for partnerships in advancing a certain goal or just helping to make people’s lives better.

Ben: Looking ahead for JTF, specifically for the John Templeton Foundation in 10 or 20, you can pick the number, but let’s take it distantly into the future. Where would you like to see, uh, the John Templeton Foundation’s impact be?

Heather: My grandfather talked about this concept of, a spiritual renaissance and in one of his books and are deeply interested in the spiritual dimension of life. We think that religious belief and practice is a net positive in society, and we think that people appreciate that and understand that in a variety of different ways. Even science, research, and physics and chemistry, and biology can kind of contribute to a wider understanding of that.

So, I would like to see our work bringing the spiritual dimension to light, helping people to appreciate it more. I think that then cycles down and literally changes the way an individual thinks about the world, that then contributes to how they interact within the institutions that they inhabit, whether it’s work, school, neighborhood, and then that contributes to strong communities.

Ben: Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to be remembered as part of your story here?

Heather: So, I think about my, one of the mottos that my grandfather used to say, or that he upheld, how little we know, how eager to learn. And I have tried to live that motto both in my leadership here at the foundation, when I’m presented with a new idea from somebody. I want to understand what they’re proposing and why, and if it makes sense, then let’s work together to get it done.

I’ve tried to do the same in the philanthropic sector by connecting with a wide variety of philanthropists who are doing many different things, some of which are aligned with what we do, some of which are very different, but trying to understand where they’re coming from and why they care about the issues that they care about, what’s important to them.

And then I think in our grant making, one of our core values is that we aim to be humble in our approach, seeking diverse perspectives, reaching out to new grantees, taking risks in some of our projects where it’s appropriate to do so. So that’s what I think we’ve tried to accomplish at JTF and what I’ve tried to do as part of my leadership here.

Ben: Well, we’re all grateful for your leadership, Heather, and I’m grateful for your time today. Thanks for joining.

Heather: Thanks, Ben. Really appreciate you, Templeton ideas and all that the communications team has done here at JTF.