Our

Foundation Team

The Chandler Foundation team is comprised of leaders who have spent their careers working on social and economic change.  Their journeys have taught them that good governance, sound policies, vibrant marketplaces and fair play are key to build opportunity for all.  

Board of Directors

Richard F. Chandler
Founder and Chairman

Richard F. Chandler is the Founder and Chairman of the Clermont Group, an international business group with its headquarters in Singapore. Clermont builds industry-leading businesses in healthcare, financial services and aerospace. These businesses employ over 6,000 people around the world.

Building Strong Businesses, Communities, and Nations

Richard is passionate about the role that great companies play in advancing the broader prosperity of humankind by creating products and services that serve customers, creating quality jobs, and providing governments with tax revenue. The Clermont Group believes in principles before profits and places a special emphasis on good corporate governance as a crucial element of business sustainability and national prosperity.

A World Flourishing with Everyone’s Creativity

Richard established the Chandler Foundation in 2013 (formerly the Cassia Foundation). Following its heritage in business and investing, the Chandler Foundation is an investor in the philanthropic marketplace. The foundation makes social investments in those who are helping to build the enabling conditions for a shared prosperity and by participating in a movement to make global development philanthropy and program partners more effective. The vision of the Chandler Foundation is to create a world flourishing with everyone’s creativity. He pioneered performance philanthropy in 1997 with his brother Christopher, when they founded Geneva Global, the world’s first “philanthropic investment bank.” From 2007 to 2013, they invested in and built healthcare and education social enterprises that served the urban poor across eight developing countries.

Russell Low
Director

Russell serves as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Clermont Group and Director of the Chandler Foundation. Russell started his career as a judicial officer in the Supreme Court of Singapore. He held a dual portfolio of Assistant Registrar and Justices’ Law Clerk. Russell presided over numerous interlocutory court applications and worked closely with the Judges of the Court of Appeal and the High Court in the analysis, research and publication of judgments.

He then joined the Attorney General’s Chambers where he advised and represented government ministries and agencies on a wide range of constitutional and civil law matters. Russell graduated from the Singapore Management University as the University Valedictorian. He obtained top honors for two bachelor’s degrees, a Bachelor of Business Management and a Bachelor of Laws. Russell is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Lee Hsien Loong All Round Achievement Award sponsored by the Singapore Ministry of Education, the Singapore Press Holdings Valedictorian Award, and the Rajah & Tann Prize for the Top Graduating Law Student.

He graduated from a Dual Masters’ Program in 2019 with a Master in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a Master in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Tim Hanstad
Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors

Tim Hanstad serves as the Vice-Chair of the Chandler Foundation’s Board of Directors. Prior to this Tim was the Chandler Foundation's first Chief Executive Officer, a position he held for five years.  Before joining the Foundation, Tim co-founded Landesa with Roy Prosterman and served as its CEO for many years, helping to grow the organization and its impact from a two-person start-up to a Global Top Ten NGO. He launched Landesa’s programs in China, the former Soviet Union, and India, where he lived for many years.

Tim is a Skoll Social Entrepreneur Awardee, a World Economic Forum Outstanding Social Entrepreneur, a Leap of Reason Ambassador, and a Co-Founder of Catalyst 2030, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs and innovators. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American, and beyond. He holds two law degrees from the University of Washington, a bachelor’s degree from Seattle Pacific University where he was Male Athlete of the Year, and has completed certificate programs at Harvard Business School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His greatest learning, however, has come from spending time with those on socioeconomic margins in more than 20 countries around the world. Tim is the proud spouse of Chitra and the father to four adult children from whom he draws inspiration.

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.

Foundation Leadership

Leslie Tsai
Director, Integrity Programs

Leslie Tsai is Director of Integrity Programs and General Counsel of the Chandler Foundation. Prior to joining the Chandler Foundation, Leslie was on the executive team of Microclinic International, a global health nonprofit working on chronic disease prevention in the U.S. and abroad.

Leslie started her legal career at the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell before moving into the non-profit and philanthropic sector. Prior to law school, Leslie spent a year at the World Bank working on financial sector development in Africa. She has been honored as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a John Gardner Public Service Fellow, a Shafik Gabr U.S.-Egypt Exchange Fellow, and a TEDx speaker. Leslie received her law degree from Harvard and her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Connect with Leslie on LinkedIn.