Rani E. Snyder, MPA

President

Rani E. Snyder, MPA, is president of The John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF), a private, non-partisan philanthropy with a mission to improve care for older adults by creating health systems that are age-friendly, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care. With more than 25 years of experience in health philanthropy, Rani has advanced national movements that have reshaped care delivery, strengthened federal and state policy, enhanced medical education, and improved health outcomes and support for millions of older adults and their caregivers.

Rani served as acting president of JAHF from April to December 2025 and as vice president of program over the previous decade, providing strategic leadership that shaped the foundation’s priorities and grantmaking investments of $220 million. She successfully recruited and manages a team of expert staff who develop and execute grant initiatives, monitor outcomes, and identify innovative approaches to expanding the impact of those programs. Rani is well-known for fostering collaboration that can scale up major initiatives through co-funding with other foundations and public-private partnerships with federal agencies, such as JAHF’s partnership with the Administration for Community Living to advance the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. Rani has led JAHF’s policy work, which has resulted in age-friendly care being embedded in health care regulations and federal programs.

Prior to joining JAHF, Rani served with the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for 14 years, starting as a program officer with a promotion to director for the foundation’s health care programs. In that capacity, she managed more than $278 million in health care grants to major medical universities throughout the country, focusing on Aging and Quality of Life Programs as well as the foundation’s $159 million investment in its Cardiovascular Clinical Research Program. During her tenure, Rani worked alongside the country’s most forward-thinking educators and pioneering health care providers to create educational and clinical programs that have significantly improved how patient care is delivered. These include collaborative and groundbreaking programming at prestigious medical institutions such as Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, New York’s Mount Sinai Medical School and UCLA’s academic health centers.

Currently, Rani serves as a board member for the American Society on Aging, a nonprofit leading the largest, most diverse community of professionals working in aging, and on the Elder and Home Care Committee of MaineHealth Mid Coast Hospital in Maine. She is a past board chair for Grantmakers In Aging, a membership organization composed of philanthropies with a common dedication to improving the experience of aging; a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine; and previously served as a volunteer long-term care ombudsman for the State of Nevada Aging and Disability Services Division. She earned an MPA in health care policy from New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, followed by doctoral studies in health services research at the UCLA School of Public Health. She began her professional career with JAHF’s Health Care Cost and Quality program in the 1990s before transitioning to supporting health policy initiatives at the Commonwealth Fund in New York City.

Rani’s career has been directed toward creating opportunities to improve the health of older adults through increased access to quality health care, enhanced health care delivery, improved medical education, collaborative partnerships, and expanded nursing and caregiver training. She brings that experience to JAHF to coordinate initiatives that foster collaboration among health systems, health care and social service providers, academic institutions, advocates, policymakers and others to improve care for all older adults.