Rashid Johnson and Nabiha Syed Elected to Mellon Foundation's Board of Trustees

The Mellon Foundation today announced the election of two new members to its Board of Trustees – Rashid Johnson and Nabiha Syed – whose work reflects the Foundation's continued commitment to centering creative freedom and civic imagination in American public life.

Johnson – one of the most celebrated and consequential American artists of his generation – is known for a multidisciplinary practice that opens space for complex conversations about identity, history, and the full texture of Black life. Syed – a lawyer, media executive, and one of the nation’s foremost champions of public interest technology – also serves as Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, where she leads a global movement of millions working toward a more open, equitable, and trustworthy internet. Together, they bring to the Board complementary visions of what it means to build a more just, more expressive, and more equitable world.

“As leaders in their respective disciplines, Rashid Johnson and Nabiha Syed each bring remarkable expertise and perspective to this board of trustees,” said Board Chair Kathryn A. Hall. “We look forward to drawing on their proven fluency in managing complexity at scale as we continue to strengthen the Foundation's infrastructure and processes in service of Mellon's mission.”

“Rashid Johnson and Nabiha Syed together reflect the breadth of Mellon's commitment both to the public good and to the capacity for learning, invention, and imagination that are fundamental to a thriving democratic society,” said Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation. “Nabiha’s precise, expansive mind and longstanding commitment to equity in the digital sphere will enrich our grantmaking and practices. Rashid’s limitless creative practice offers a point of view and methodology that will both challenge and ground our work and advance our efforts to make the arts, culture, and humanities accessible to all.”

Johnson brings to this role more than two decades of work at the intersection of art history, critical theory, and civic imagination, and a deep commitment to the humanities as a public good. Although he launched his career in photography, his practice has evolved to encompass sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation — often incorporating materials loaded with personal and cultural symbolism, including shea butter, black soap, books, plants, and tile. His work is held in the permanent collections of the world’s most prestigious cultural institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Most recently, his mid-career survey, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2025 and is currently on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He earned a B.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and pursued graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“The Mellon Foundation has long understood something that I think about every time I walk into my studio: that art is not a luxury, it is a necessity,” said Johnson. “The questions I’ve spent my career exploring - about identity, history, interiority, and what it means to be fully human - are the same questions the humanities have always grappled with. I’m humbled and excited to bring my perspective to this board and to support the Foundation’s work in bringing those questions to wider audiences.”

As Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, Syed brings a deep commitment to accountability as a foundation for democratic life. Prior to Mozilla, she served as Chief Executive Officer of The Markup, the award-winning journalism nonprofit that challenged technology to serve the public good, leading it from launch through its successful acquisition in 2024. A Marshall Scholar and graduate of Yale Law School - where she co-founded the Media Freedom and Information Access legal clinic - Syed began her career as the First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times before going on to lead libel and newsgathering matters at BuzzFeed. She has been honored with numerous distinctions, including Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40, a Rising Star Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the NAACP/Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award. She sits on the boards of the Scott Trust and serves as a lecturer at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

“I came to this work through the First Amendment, which is, in the end, a promise about imagination: that a society confident enough to be free must also be confident enough to be argued with, rewritten, reimagined,” said Syed. “The humanities are where that confidence is cultivated, one reader and one scholar at a time. Mellon has been their most steadfast American patron, and I am honored to serve on the board.”

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The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation's largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.