Kevin Starr directs the Foundation and the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program, both of which are focused on scalable solutions to meet the basic needs of the very poor.

Kevin had a perfectly good career in medicine when he stumbled into philanthropy in 1994. His friend and mentor Rainer Arnhold died suddenly when they were working together in Bolivia, and the Arnhold family asked Kevin to help carry on Rainer's work through the Mulago Foundation. He spent the next decade working with projects from Afghanistan to Zambia, trying to figure out what makes for real impact at big scale.

Kevin established the Foundation's Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program in 2003 for social entrepreneurs focused on scalable solutions to poverty. He then created the Henry Arnhold Fellows Program in 2016 that concentrates on finding scalable solutions to conservation and climate problems. Both the programs gives fellows a chance to design for impact that can go big. Kevin teaches and mentors fellows in numerous other programs for social entrepreneurs. He was a founder of Big Bang Philanthropy, a group of funders working together to direct more money to those best at fighting poverty.

Kevin went through medical school and residency at UC San Francisco and has lived in SF ever since.