American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

Futter, Ellen V.
President of AMNH
Ellen V. Futter has been President of the American Museum of Natural History since November 1993. She previously served for 13 years as president of Barnard College where, at the time of her inauguration, she was the youngest person to assume the presidency of a major American college. Committed to public service, Ms. Futter serves on the boards of several nonprofit and for-profit organizations, including the Brookings Institution, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Consolidated Edison. Ms. Futter is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Philosophical Society. She is widely recognized as a dynamic voice for science education and is an active supporter of women’s rights. Ms. Futter was a member of the Carnegie Corporation of New York–Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education, which issued the report “The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy.” In 2010, she testified before the Science and Technology Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on the critical role museums and other science-based institutions can play in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Ms. Futter has been awarded numerous honorary degrees and other awards, including the 2014 Rachel Carson Award from the National Audubon Society. She has the distinction of having been the first woman to head a major New York City cultural institution and the first woman to be chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, from Barnard College in 1971 and earned her J.D. degree from Columbia University Law School in 1974. (AMNH Press Release, October 2017)