Heidi McAnnally-Linz Named Deputy Director of the MacMillan Center at Yale

Heidi McAnnally-Linz has been appointed deputy director at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. She will help guide the Center’s overall strategy and oversee its academic programs, grant programs, fellowship and visiting scholar programs, and communications. Her first day at Yale will be September 20.

“We are pleased to welcome Heidi back to the MacMillan Center as part of its senior management team,” said Steven I. Wilkinson, Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center and Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. “She will work closely with our faculty leaders and staff to articulate and advance the Center’s goals in the years ahead.”

Heidi joins the MacMillan Center from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), where over the past decade she has had positions of increasing responsibility and success, most recently as the director of policy and external relations. In that role she helped develop overall organizational strategy with IPA’s executive director and led a global policy and external relations team of more than 35 people in 12 countries.  

“I am thrilled to be able to bring my global leadership experience and research translation skills to a Center—and a group of world-renowned faculty, brilliant students, and dedicated staff—I have long admired,” said Heidi. “The MacMillan Center plays a vital catalytic role in bringing Yale’s global research resources and minds across disciplines to tackle the world’s biggest questions and most challenging problems. It is a privilege to join them on that mission.”

Much of Heidi’s early career was spent at Yale. From 2010-12, she helped launch and administer the Senior Fellows Program at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Prior to that, she was an administrator for the Georg Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at the MacMillan Center. 

Before her work at Yale, Heidi was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and worked with indigenous groups throughout Latin America and led several small nonprofits. She speaks Spanish and has worked extensively in Latin America, but has also led teams scaling up programs informed by research across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.        

Heidi is currently the Vice President of the Board for Pueblo a Pueblo and a board member and former board chair of Natik Esperanza. She holds an MPA in International Policy and Management from New York University and a BA in Political Science from Haverford College.