When Susan Berresford became President of the Foundation in 1996, she established a new program structure consisting of three large thematic programs. Peace and Social Justice (PSJ) was one of these three programs. Its overall mission was to help improve government performance and accountability, foster a thriving independent civil society, and promote human rights. It was comprised of two global units: Governance and Civil Society, and Human Rights. In 2009, Peace and Social Justice became the Democracy, Rights and Justice Program.

The Governance and Civil Society unit continued much of the work of the former Governance and Public Policy unit. Its specific goal, according to the Ford Foundation Annual Report for 1996, was to "stimulate new approaches to designing and implementing public policies, and enhance the role of civic organizations, particularly philanthropies, in promoting democratic values."

Social activist, attorney and Foundation executive Urvashi Vaid was born in India in 1958 and moved to the United States when she was eight years old. At age eleven she became politically active, and participated in marches protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam. Ms. Vaid attended Vassar College on an academic scholarship and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in English and Political Science. She then spent three months as a volunteer intern with the Women's Prison Project and worked as a legal secretary and administrative assistant for a law firm in Boston. During the early 1980s, Ms. Vaid helped found the Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance and the Allston-Brighton Greenlight Safehouse Network, an anti-violence neighborhood project. Ms. Vaid attended the Northeastern University School of Law and received a J.D. degree in 1983. From 1983-1986, she worked for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prisons Project, where she conducted class action lawsuits to improve conditions in American prisons. She then joined the staff of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, serving as Media Director (1986-1989), Executive Director (1989-1992), and Policy Institute Director (1997-2000).

Ms. Vaid joined the Ford Foundation in 2000 as a Program Officer and, in January 2001, was appointed Deputy Director of the Governance and Civil Society unit. A major emphasis of her work was the "Collaborations that Count" initiative, which had been launched in 1998 to support cooperation among state-level organizations working for social and economic justice. Ms. Vaid also played a role in the "State Fiscal Analysis" Initiative, and oversaw grants to support gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights organizations. Ms. Vaid left the Ford Foundation in 2005 to head the Arcus Foundation.

Ms. Vaid is author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (Anchor, 1996), and is co-editor, with John D'Emilio and William Turner, of Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (St. Martin's Press, 2000).