Mary Ann Meyers is a writer and the Senior Fellow at the John Templeton Foundation. For more than a decade she served as Secretary of the University of Pennsylvania, where throughout her tenure she taught American civilization courses in the history of religion in America. She was subsequently President of The Annenberg Foundation. While later serving as a consultant to numerous philanthropic and educational institutions, she spent several years as Vice President for External Affairs at Moore College of Art and Design. Earlier in her career, she was an assistant to Penn’s President (and now President Emeritus) Martin Meyerson. She also served as Director of College Relations at Haverford College, where she taught in the Freshman Seminar Program and edited the college’s alumni magazine.

Dr. Meyers is the author of Art, Education and African-American Culture: Albert Barnes and the Science of Philanthropy (2004 and 2006), A New World Jerusalem: The Swedenborgian Experience in Community Construction (1983), a co-author of Religion in American Life (1987), Coping With Serious Illness (1977), and Death in America (1975), as well as contributor to Gladly Learn and Gladly Teach: Franklin and His Heirs at the University of Pennsylvania (1978). Her work has appeared in academic journals, general interest magazines, and newspapers. For many years, she was a contributing editor of The Pennsylvania Gazette. Her articles for the Penn alumni magazine won a variety of prizes, including the Newsweek-CASE Award for Public Affairs Reporting and a Silver Medal in the CASE Competition for the Best Article of the Year, as well as awards from Women in Communications.

Currently secretary and a director of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and a member of the board of advisors of the Peter Gruber Foundation, Dr. Meyers has previously served as a trustee of both the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Press, an overseer of Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the boards of advisors of its Department of Biology and Annenberg Center, among other professional and civic activities.

A magna cum laude graduate of Syracuse University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Meyers earned a Ph.D. in American civilization at the University of Pennsylvania. She heads the Humble Approach Initiative, a Templeton program that brings together scientists, philosophers, and theologians in a series of international symposia.