Carter M. Stewart

Carter M. Stewart serves as Executive Director of Impact for Equity. Carter’s passion for Impact for Equity’s mission derives from his own family’s journey to home ownership in Chicago in the 1940s as well as his past experiences working as a federal prosecutor and volunteering in the foster care system as a Court Appointed Special Advocate.

Carter came to Impact for Equity from the Mellon Foundation in New York where he served as Executive Vice President over program. Prior to that, he was a Managing Director of the venture philanthropy Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, based in California.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Carter to be the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. As US Attorney, Carter emphasized deterrence, crime prevention and alternatives to incarceration. Carter also took a leadership role at the Department of Justice addressing inequities in the criminal justice system by raising awareness about the school to prison pipeline and by chairing a working group of U.S. Attorneys focused on reducing racial disparities in the federal system.

During his tenure in Ohio, Carter taught “Lawyers as Leaders” for four years at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, and he was the lead investigator and co-author of a research evaluation of Columbus, Ohio’s response to the 2020 uprising.

Carter’s legal career includes serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Jose, CA, and working as a litigator at two law firms: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP in Columbus, OH, and Bingham McCutchen LLP in San Francisco, CA. Prior to law school, Carter was a New York City Urban Fellow and then taught history at Friends Seminary High School and the Prep for Prep program.

Carter received a JD from Harvard Law School, holds an MA in Education Policy from Columbia University, and received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Stanford University. He clerked for the Honorable Robert L. Carter, U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of New York, and the Honorable Raymond L. Finch, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of the Virgin Islands.