​​​​​Kenneth W. Austin provides overall legal counsel to Wallace’s management and board, including serving as corporate secretary. In addition to playing a lead role in supporting the foundation’s public policy engagement efforts, he coordinates the foundation’s enterprise risk management analysis. Before joining Wallace in 2013, Austin was managing partner of ClassicManhattan, LLC, a New York City real estate firm. In 2021, he was elected board chair of Philanthropy New York, a membership organization of New York-based grant-makers.

Austin served for many years as a senior leader of several national philanthropic organizations based in New York. He was also a founding board member of govWorks, Inc., an e-government services and Internet provider, where he served as director of business development, corporate secretary and chief legal officer. He was featured in Startup.com, an award-winning documentary on govWorks. Prior to this, Austin was an honors attorney with the U.S. Treasury Department and worked as a corporate associate with Davis Polk & Wardwell in London and New York. At Davis Polk, Austin represented Fortune 500 companies in initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and banking matters and provided counsel to corporate boards.

Austin received an A.B. in government from Harvard College and a J.D. from The Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal​.