Remembering Kirke P. Wilson (1938-2026)
The Rosenberg Foundation mourns the passing of Kirke Wilson, who led the Foundation for more than three decades and helped shape its lasting commitment to social justice, immigrant rights, economic opportunity and the well being of children and families across California.
Kirke served as the Foundation’s executive director from 1974 to 2005 and as president from 1999 to 2005. During that time, he guided Rosenberg through profound demographic, economic and political change, strengthening the Foundation’s capacity to support bold ideas and policy advocacy, especially on behalf of immigrants, low-wage workers and children and families living in poverty. Kirke joined the foundation as it was refining its role in support of California communities. Over the next three decades, he helped move Rosenberg toward a deep focus on supporting advocacy, community organizing and enduring policy change.
During his tenure, Rosenberg invested in grassroots organizers, legal and policy advocates, researchers and communicators working to ensure that California’s economic growth and demographic transformation included the people whose labor sustained the state. Under his leadership, the Foundation advanced immigrant rights, farmworker justice and worker power , child and family economic security, affordable housing, quality child-care access, youth leadership and philanthropic accountability.
Kirke also supported visionary grantees whose litigation, policy and organizing strategies challenged the exploitation of low-wage workers. Their work significantly reformed state policies and practices to protect workers across many industries – such as garment, farmwork and janitorial services – through creative legal approaches and building stronger worker power to address changes in the economy.
Kirke helped establish immigrant rights and immigration reform as a core Rosenberg priority at a time when California’s changing population was reshaping the state’s future. Under his leadership, the Foundation was the second largest philanthropic funder in the country of services for immigrants seeking legalization after the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Kirke led groundbreaking work expanding language rights and bilingual access; immigrant students’ educational rights; voting and civic participation; and legal advocacy to protect families from exclusion and discrimination. He also championed the Foundation’s support for civil rights organizations who successfully struck down California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994.
Rosenberg grants supported a statewide network of community organizations, legal services providers, labor groups and policy advocates. This work helped ensure that immigrants were recognized as neighbors, workers, parents and civic participants whose full inclusion was essential to California’s future. The foundation provided leadership to national efforts to secure a path to legalization of farmworkers as the ultimate protection, building on the Foundation’s long-standing support for farmworkers.
Kirke’s commitment to farmworker communities began well before his time at Rosenberg. While living in Tulare County and through his work at the American Friends Service Committee Farm Labor Project and the Sequoia Farm Labor Association, he saw firsthand the poverty, egregious housing, unsafe conditions and exclusion confronting seasonal and migrant workers in the San Joaquin Valley.
Kirke understood that philanthropy could not solve every problem, but he believed foundations had a unique responsibility to take informed risks, support ideas before they became comfortable and conventional, and stand with people too often excluded from power and opportunity. He took the long view, recognizing that meaningful policy change and power building could take many years, requiring long term and steadfast support of a variety of grantees working together or following complementary strategies. This was particularly true of the Foundation’s multi-year support of advocates who successfully overhauled California’s child support system to provide greater economic security to children.
We are deeply grateful to Kirke for his extraordinary leadership and the care he brought to the Rosenberg Foundation and our grant partners for more than three decades. His work helped strengthen a generation of organizations and leaders throughout California, and his legacy continues in the many movements building a more just and equitable state.
We extend our deepest condolences to Kirke’s family, friends, colleagues, and all those whose lives were touched by his wisdom, generous spirit and unwavering commitment to justice.