Heinz Family Foundation

Heinz Family Foundation

The Heinz Family Foundation was established in 1984 by H. John Heinz III, the Republican U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and heir to the H.J. Heinz Company, alongside his wife Teresa. Following Senator Heinz's death in a 1991 plane crash, Teresa Heinz Kerry assumed leadership as Chair and CEO, steering the foundation for over three decades. The institution is part of a broader constellation of Heinz-linked philanthropic vehicles, including The Heinz Endowments — a separate, larger foundation that reports its financials independently — and the H. John Heinz III Foundation. The foundation's investment strategy, overseen by Chief Investment Officer McCall Cravens, reflects a hybrid approach that blends traditional endowment management with direct exposure to alternative assets. Public records confirm that the foundation commits to private-equity secondary funds — a strategy that purchases existing LP interests — and maintains a notable allocation to fine art, a category rarely held at scale within similarly sized foundations. The Heinz Family Art Collection, assembled over decades, sits alongside more conventional assets like a Gulfstream G-IV aircraft, a residential portfolio spanning Fox Chapel, Nantucket, Sun Valley, and Georgetown, and the mixed-use Hazelwood Green development in Pittsburgh. The foundation operates with a lean core team anchored by Teresa Heinz Kerry and her sons Christopher and André Heinz, who serve as directors. Christopher Heinz co-founded Rosemont Capital, an investment firm that expands the family's capital deployment beyond the foundation's direct purview. McCall Cravens functions as CIO for both the Heinz Family Office and the Foundation, a dual-hat structure that centralizes investment decision-making. In 2025, the foundation announced that its signature Heinz Awards program — which has honored figures such as surgeon Atul Gawande and composer Philip Glass — would conclude in December 2025, marking a strategic pivot away from its highest-visibility public program. The Heinz Family Foundation differs structurally from most peer foundations in its close integration with an active family office and a constellation of related entities. Rather than a standalone grant-making institution, it functions as the philanthropic hub of a multi-generational enterprise that blends ERISA-governed operating businesses, a private investment office, and multiple foundations under coordinated family governance — a model that Teresa Heinz Kerry has maintained through marriage to former Secretary of State John Kerry, whose own public-service obligations have occasionally intersected with the family's policy-oriented grantmaking.