Eva Orlebeke Caldera

Eva Caldera has been with the NEH since 2009, and serves as Assistant Chairman for Partnership and Strategic Initiatives in the office of the NEH Chairman. In that role, she is leading the special initiative launched by NEH Chairman William Adams, The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square. Designed to demonstrate the critical role humanities scholarship can play in our public life, that effort encompasses grant programs across the Endowment, as well as special projects and partnerships that help to connect humanities scholars and institutions to current public concerns. Among those concerns is the return of veterans from recent conflicts, addressed by NEH’s Standing Together initiative, a project that she helped to design and launch in 2014. She has also been at the helm of the Bridging Cultures initiative, which has emphasized the role of the humanities in the global context that has shaped world history and contemporary life. She has worked with partners ranging from US foundations to foreign governments to universities and libraries across the country. Eva also oversees NEH’s educational website, EDSITEment, which reaches out to a broad network of K-12 classrooms with high quality teaching resources in history, literature and other humanities disciplines. Before coming to NEH, she was on the faculty of the law and medical schools at the University of New Mexico, where she taught and conducted research in ethics, law, and policy relating to health care and new technologies. Recently released is “Cognitive Enhancement and Theories of Justice: Contemplating the Malleability of Nature and Self,” selected for inclusion in Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Personality Psychology (L. Newman, R. Larsen, eds.), McGraw Hill, 2011, originally published in Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 18, Issue 1 (May 2008). She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and has practiced law in Washington and Los Angeles.