Alison Bernstein, who expanded opportunities for learning and tackled challenging social problems as an educator and as an official of the Ford Foundation, died on June 30 at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 69.

The cause was endometrial cancer, her partner, Johanna Schoen, said.

Ms. Bernstein was a polymath who brought her broad knowledge to bear on an array of causes during her time at the Ford Foundation, where she worked from 1983 until 2010, with a break in the early 1990s. She started as a program officer, determining which projects merited financing, and later became a vice president overseeing other grant-makers for the foundation’s Education, Creativity and Free Expression Program (now called Creativity and Free Expression).

Susan Berresford, the Ford Foundation’s president during much of Ms. Bernstein’s time there, said that Ms. Bernstein’s abilities were immediately apparent.

“She was a lively and curious and wonderfully imaginative person, and this all came across in 10 minutes” during their first interview, Ms. Berresford said on Friday.