Angela S. Filo

Filo established the Yellow Chair Foundation, which awards grants to organizations focused on education, civil liberties, gender equity and the environment, in 2000. She leads the day-to-day operations and programmatic work of the family foundation, which is based in Palo Alto.

In 2014, the foundation awarded grants to 36 organizations, including Bing Nursery School, which is part of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, and Stanford New Schools, which supports the East Palo Alto Academy, a small public charter high school. The foundation also awarded grants to national organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Sierra Club, and to international organizations, including the Global Fund for Women.

At Stanford, Filo is a member of the advisory council and the dean’s task force at the Graduate School of Education.

Previously, she served on The Stanford Challenge K-12 Advisory Council and as a volunteer for her 20th reunion in 2013. Filo earned a bachelor’s degree in human biology at Stanford in 1993, followed by a master’s degree in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999.

Filo and her husband, David (MS ’90), have supported several areas at the university, including establishing professorships in the Graduate School of Education and the School of Engineering, and helping to launch the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship.

Filo also is a photographer and educator.

Her photography and public art installations, which examine how economic cycles transform the landscape, are held several collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the City of San Jose and Fidelity Investments.

Filo is a former journalism and photography teacher at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, and a former member of the board of directors of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C. Currently, she is the co-chair of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Centennial Campaign.