By Peter Panepento and Ian Wilhelm

The Ford Foundation has announced that Luis A. Ubiñas, a business consultant with little background in grant making, will take over as its chief executive in 2008.

He replaces Susan V. Berresford, who announced last fall that after 12 years as head of the institution she plans to retire in 2008.

The choice of Mr. Ubiñas — a director at the San Francisco office of McKinsey & Company, the management-consulting company where he has worked for the past 18 years — raised many eyebrows in the nonprofit world.

“If I was going to bet the ranch I would have bet it against Ford naming a McKinsey consultant as CEO,” says Phil Buchanan, executive director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, in Cambridge, Mass.

Most surprising was that Ford’s Board of Trustees chose a candidate with little experience managing a large foundation or charity.

“It’s not something that you learn how to do at Harvard Business School,” says William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington.

Mr. Ubiñas however, says he is well prepared to take over the reins of one of the nation’s most venerable philanthropic organizations.

He says despite appearances to the contrary, there are many similarities between McKinsey and Ford.

“I come from a place whose bread and butter is innovation, and Ford applies innovation in a different sector, but the reality is it is as innovative-driven as where I come from,” he says.

What’s more, while he has worked in the corporate world, he has volunteered on nonprofit boards in preparation for what he calls a “second career of doing work not just for myself but for the benefit of others.”

For instance, Mr. Ubiñas serves on the board of Leadership Education and Development, a Philadelphia organization that provides educational opportunities nationwide to Latino and black students from low-income families, and is a trustee of the United Way in San Francisco.

Mr. Ubiñas, who will earn $675,000 in his new role, will officially join Ford in January. He says he does not plan major changes right away, but instead wants to meet with grant recipients and Ford staff members. “The first thing I need to do is listen and learn,” he says.

While some Ford observers questioned the choice of Mr. Ubiñas, others said his strategic-planning background may prove to be a boon for the foundation.

“As foundations are being hard pressed to demonstrate impact and value, they are being asked to ratchet up their strategic vision. This is a response to that pressure,” says Jon Funabiki, who had spent 11 years as a deputy director of the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts & Culture unit before leaving in 2006 to become a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University.

“Will he bring more of bottom line approach to the world of philanthropy? That will be interesting to follow,” Mr. Funabiki says.

Mr. Ubiñas’s age also surprised some observers. At 44, he will be working in a world that is largely dominated by older faces.

“The real surprise about it is they actually picked someone in their 40s,” says Vincent Stehle, a program officer at the Surdna Foundation and chairman of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers. “At the outset, we heard that was one of the search criteria, but nobody believed it. The pressure could have been there to get someone there with more gravitas, longer experience, that sort of credibility.”

Mr. Stehle added that Mr. Ubiñas’s professional experience, which has been focused on helping media companies deal with a rapidly changing marketplace, will be crucial as he attempts to lead the Ford Foundation through similar changes.

“Philanthropy, like the media — whether it’s newspaper or television or the old pillars of authority in the media business — is being shaken a bit,” he says. “Philanthropy may be facing similar challenges in terms of accountability, in terms of the decentralization of power in decision making. More people may be clamoring for involvement, engagement, participation in the decision-making process. Understanding how to navigate that is going to be a great skill.”

Putting that skill to use in an institution as large as the Ford Foundation will be a challenge, says Mr. Funabiki, who believes it will take Mr. Ubiñas some time to be able to begin to put his stamp on the organization.

But, despite those challenges, observers say the Ford Foundation has chosen someone who, on paper, has an impressive skill set.

“They’ve obviously gone with someone who has good management skills — and great skills overall,” says Peter J. Frumkin, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “You have to have a certain amount on the ball to succeed at McKinsey. That place chews people up and spits them out with some regularity.”

The Ford Foundation was ranked as the second wealthiest foundation in the United States, with more than $12-billion in assets, according to The Chronicle’s most-recent survey of big grant makers.

(Read an article by a Chronicle columnist suggesting what qualities the Ford Foundation should have looked for in its president.)