Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer

1967 - 2017

Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer

AGE: 50 •

passed away peacefully on May 16, 2017 after a short battle with cancer at her home in England. She was surrounded by her beloved husband of 23 years, Jonathan and their three children Samuel, Isabel and Nathaniel. She is also survived by her parents, Rodman Jr and Susan Ward of Wilmington, her sisters Gigi Garnett (James) of Darien CT, Emily Ward Neilson (Lewis Levin) of Seattle and her brother, Rodman Ward III (Gina) of Wilmington and her ten nieces and nephews.

Jennifer was born in Wilmington on February 5, 1967. She attended Tower Hill School and Phillips Academy in Andover followed by studies at Harvard (A B '89 Magna cum Laude; J D'93). While at Harvard she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Hong Kong. Following a short period of legal practice at the law firm Davis, Polk and Wardwell in New York and London, she married Jonathan. They moved to Southern Africa living briefly in Zimbabwe before making their permanent home in Johannesburg. While there she completed a Master's degree in Developmental Studies in the London School of Economics.

Jennifer dedicated much of her professional life to civil society organizations in Africa, including her long time chairmanship of the DeBeers Fund for social investment throughout South Africa, The Paleological Scientific Trust, and the Lee R Burger Foundation for Exploration and the Evolutionary Studies Institute. Through her Isibindi Trust, Jennifer participated in the founding of The African Leadership University and separately its school of conservation in Ruwanda. Fifteen years ago, with her husband, she founded the Brenthurst Foundation, one of the world's leading forums at which statesmen and thinkers gather to promote African economic development.

For Harvard she served on the Advisory Council of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and the Harvard Global Advisory Board in the UK. She also served as a trustee on the University of Cape Town Trust and The Lutyens Trust in the U K. Quite recently, to commemorate her 50th birthday her family endowed a chair at Cambridge University to teach the deep history of Africa.

Professionally, Jennifer was remembered by Andrea Leenen, the chief executive of the Paleontological Scientific Trust as a "woman of force", A leader who was "fierce in the boardroom without being intimidated by men".