Fox Leadership goes global with $5 million donation

The Fox Leadership Program will gain a global dimension following a $5 million gift from Robert and Penny Fox, the program announced Tuesday.

Fox Leadership, established in 1999 by its donors, expanded in 2013 to establish new scholarships within the College of Arts and Sciences. Now, the program will include more opportunities in China for students and faculty. Including the most recent donation, the Fox family has now donated over $33 million in total. 

“We want to bring an international component to our events, workshops and teaching,” said Joseph Tierney, executive director of the program. In practice, this means working with Penn’s Fels Institute of Government to organize a summer program, piloted last summer. In the pilot, 46 students from the Jiangsu Province of China spent three weeks on Penn’s campus.

Fox Leadership International will expand and multiply its service-learning programs in Africa. It will also develop a program to place Fox fellows withpresidents, prime ministers or consul generals ofnations in the European Union.

Tierney will visit China in March to further explore ways to develop higher education programs in the country. FLI China also hopes to devise further initiatives to send Penn staff and fellows there.

"We're starting with China and building on the positive experiences that we had last summer," Tierney said. "So it's a starting point."

“FLI is a big leap,” John DiIulio, faculty director of the Fox Leadership Program told The Almanac. "But we have the information, experience and partnerships to make it work."

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