Dan Martin joined The John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1986 when he was named director of the Foundation’s World Environment and Resources Program. The program supports conservation, public education, policy studies, and sustainable development projects relating to key environmental issues.

He also served as director of the Foundation’s General Program, which concentrates on special funding initiatives and issues regarding the media, from 1986 to 1990, and as director of the Population Program, which addresses the complex issues of population, reproductive rights, and reproductive health, from 1988 and 1991.

As director of the World Environment and Resources program, he oversees a staff of ten, which is responsible for grantmaking of roughly $17 million a year.

Prior to his work at the Foundation, he was president of the Jessie Smith Hoyes Foundation, a private foundation specializing in grantmaking in the areas of the environment, population, and education, from 1984 until 1986. He also served as President of two other institutions: the Cranbook Educational Community, an educational and cultural complex outside Detroit, from 1980 until 1984, and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, an academic consortium of thirteen private liberal arts and colleges. He served as president of the association from 1972 until 1980.

From 1969 until 1972, he was Assistant to the Chancellor at Vanderbilt University, where he also served as assistant professor of political science. While at Vanderbilt, he conducted a national study on the financing of research-oriented medical schools.

A graduate of Knox College, Martin earned his doctorate in political philosophy and international politics from Princeton University in 1968.