FANNIE AND JOHN HERTZ FOUNDATION

The Hertz Foundation is committed to enhancing our nation's security and economic vitality by building and nurturing our pipeline of leaders in science and technology.

Through the Hertz Fellowship, we provide the nation’s most exceptional graduate students in science and technology with five years of funding, research freedom during their doctoral work, and mentorship and networking opportunities throughout their careers to pursue innovative solutions that address our nation’s, and the world’s, most pressing challenges and promising technological opportunities.

Key to fueling these leaders in science and technology is programming offered through the Hertz community, the network of more than 1,200 Hertz Fellows that includes many of our nation’s most accomplished science and technology leaders and disruptors. The community offers a variety of programs, including internships, professional mentoring, research collaborations, and workshops to fuel fellows’ professional impact and success.

The Hertz community’s intimate size and representation across a diverse array of fields creates a powerful engine to support professional endeavors and collaboration. It provides a unique resource to recruit world-class talent into their academic, private, and government institutions, as well as to identify potential research collaborators, partner on technology commercialization, and identify and invest in early-stage companies.

The past year has shown the power of investing in our nation’s future science and technology leaders. Amid a global public health crisis, emerging threats to cybersecurity, expansive environmental catastrophes, and global insecurity, it is our nation’s scientists, engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists—many of them Hertz Fellows—who have and continue to provide trustworthy breakthroughs and technological advancements that have already saved lives.

That’s why we aim to give Hertz Fellows unparalleled research freedom and flexibility during their doctoral work and access to their peers in the Hertz community throughout their lives. By enabling Hertz Fellows to pursue bold ideas, potent collaborations, and promising opportunities, we empower them to apply their talent where it is most urgently needed—from the future of healthcare and the environment to the security of our nation and the world.

Strategy 1. Enhance the Hertz Fellowship Model
- Secure additional funding to increase annual fellowship awards to 25 annually.
- Expand student programming to include more in-depth career mentoring, soft-skill development and expanded internships to enrich their readiness to hit the ground running in their careers of choice.

Strategy 2. Create a One-of-a-Kind Community of Hertz Fellows
Our goal is to offer career development and collaboration opportunities that empower Hertz Fellows to solve our nation’s most pressing challenges.

One of the Hertz Foundation’s most powerful differentiators is the lifelong support we provide to our community of more than 1,200 Hertz Fellows, including mentoring, professional development workshops, and networking opportunities. Through this community, our Hertz Fellows are equipped with a set of peers and collaborators–spanning scientific disciplines, geography, and multiple generations–to help them develop ideas and offer professional support at every stage of their careers.

We have hired a new Director of Community, who in collaboration with the chair of our Fellowship and Programs Council, will be working with select volunteers around the country to develop enhanced programs that amplify the career success of all fellows, from those currently in graduate school to more senior fellows who are established in their careers.

Strategy 3. Enhance Diverse Pipelines to Fuel Innovation
The Hertz Foundation believes that by diversifying the nation’s pipeline of leadership in science and technology, we can help fuel the pace and significance of our nation’s science and technology advancement and global leadership. Therefore, we have established two objectives:

Attract a more diverse pool of fellowship candidates reflecting the most promising STEM PhD talent in the US, regardless of their collegiate background, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, and age. By doing so, the foundation can discover and fund even more promising young scientists whose creative approaches to their work hold the potential for shattering frontiers and benefiting our nation.

We expect our fellows to be leaders in their disciplines as well as their professions in every respect throughout their careers. Therefore, we aim to support and mentor fellows in best practices to attract, lead, and nurture diverse and exceptionally high-performing teams.