[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 23 (Wednesday, February 13, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S694-S695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO PATTY STONESIFER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is easy from our perch on Capitol Hill 
to sometimes forget about the city that surrounds us. Like so many 
communities across the country, urban and rural, Washington, D.C. 
wrestles with a population in poverty. Soon, those people will have a 
new advocate at the head of one of the Nation's capital's leading 
organizations focused on ending the cycle of poverty among local youth 
and adults. Starting in April, Patty Stonesifer will become the new 
C.E.O. and President of Martha's Table.
  Patty devoted 9 years of her life to the work of the Gates 
Foundation. As its chief executive officer, she helped the foundation 
become the largest philanthropic institution in the world while taking 
no salary for herself. After her time at the Gates Foundation, Patty's 
passion for change led her to become part of the U.S. delegation to the 
United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions on AIDS, and was later 
appointed by President Obama in 2010 to chair the White House Council 
for Community Solutions. We have become friends through our shared 
service on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, and she is active on the 
board of the Center for Global Development, and is a member of the 
Circle of Allies and Champions for the National Council of Youth 
Leaders.
  Patty's dedication to philanthropy aligns perfectly with the mission 
of Martha's Table. This nonprofit is more than a food pantry. Not only 
does Martha's Table supply more than 1,000 meals each day to hungry 
Washingtonians, it also works to develop long-term solutions to hunger 
and nutrition issues, seeking an end to poverty. Martha's Table helps 
to break the cycle of poverty by providing education, nutrition, and 
family support services to hundreds of children and families. Martha's 
Table is lucky to have someone like Patty at the helm. I have no doubt 
she will successfully prepare the next generation of young people for a 
bright future. Patty's self sacrifice and dedication to ending poverty 
and hunger in our Nation's Capital is to be commended, and I wish her 
the best of luck in her new role.
  I ask unanimous consent that an article from The Washington Post 
entitled, ``Patty Stonesifer, former CEO of Gates Foundation, to lead 
D.C. food pantry,'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [The Washington Post, January 29, 2013]

  Patty Stonesifer, Former CEO of Gates Foundation, To Lead D.C. Food 
                                 Pantry

                           (By Steve Hendrix)

       It took about six months after moving to Washington for 
     Patty Stonesifer to find her new job. As the former chief 
     executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she had a 
     lot of corner-office options to sift through, including a 
     university presidency and the top jobs at a national charity 
     and an international development agency.
       Her choice? She's going to run Martha's Table on 14th 
     Street NW. Starting April 1, she will take over the well-
     regarded but decidedly local food pantry and family-services 
     nonprofit organization.
       Stonesifer, 56, who oversaw the Gates Foundation endowment 
     of $39 billion and a staff of more than 500 for nine years, 
     will manage the D.C. charity's $6 million budget, 81 paid 
     employees, three vans and thrift shop.
       Martha's Table plans an official announcement Wednesday. 
     But as word of Stonesifer's unexpected career move began to 
     circulate in recent days, it inspired twin reactions: 
     ``Wow!'' and ``Why?''
       Overachievers usually work their way from small to big. 
     Having Stonesifer come run a small local charity is like 
     General Electric business titan Jack Welch showing up to 
     manage the corner appliance store, or one of the Super Bowl-
     bound Harbaugh brothers deciding to coach high school 
     football.
       ``If you just look at my resume, I find that I have to 
     explain this,'' Stonesifer said last

[[Page S695]]

     week at the temporary office she'd established at a Busboys 
     and Poets table across the street from her new home base. In 
     between a series of briefings from Martha's Table managers, 
     she tried to explain how a top-of-the-charts philanthropy pro 
     came to match fates with an ambitious local charity.
       ``But if you know me, I don't have to explain it at all,'' 
     she said. ``I absolutely think I can help Martha's Table, but 
     this is going to be wonderful for me.''
       A shift in scale
       Cathy Sulzberger, the head of the Martha's Table board of 
     directors, was in a taxicab last fall when she got a call 
     from the headhunter leading the board's search for a new 
     leader: A surprising--and exciting--candidate had applied.
       ``Honestly, my first response was, `Is Patty Stonesifer 
     sure she wants this kind of job?' '' recalled Sulzberger.
       Running the 33-year-old nonprofit group will certainly be a 
     shift in scale. Under Stonesifer, the Gates Foundation became 
     the largest philanthropic institution in the world. It has 
     set colossal, planet-shifting goals for itself: eradicating 
     polio and malaria, transforming American high schools, and 
     more.
       Before that, Stonesifer was a senior vice president at 
     Microsoft responsible for developing MSNBC, Encarta and Slate 
     magazine (now owned by The Washington Post Co.).
       More recently, President Obama asked her to chair his White 
     House Council for Community Solutions, and she has just 
     wrapped up a stint as chairman of the Smithsonian 
     Institution's Board of Regents. Stonesifer has appeared on 
     Time magazine's annual list of the 25 Most Influential 
     People. She is married to journalist and founding Slate 
     editor Michael Kinsley. She is a boldface name.
       ``There is no phone call that Patty would make that 
     wouldn't be returned, none at all,'' said Diana Aviv, 
     president of Independent Sector, a Washington-based coalition 
     of nonprofit groups and foundations.
       Soon after leaving the Gates Foundation in 2008, Stonesifer 
     and Kinsley began splitting their time between Seattle and 
     the District, where he used to live and where she has a 
     daughter from a previous marriage working at USAID. Last 
     year, Kinsley accepted an editor's job at the New Republic 
     magazine, and they decided to make the District their full-
     time home.
       Stonesifer has been wealthy since piling up tens of 
     millions in Microsoft stock in the company's early years. 
     (She also became a director at Amazon.com before it went 
     public and remains on that company's board.) But she retains 
     the modest bent of the Indiana Catholic who grew up with 
     eight siblings in a house where volunteerism was as regular 
     as making the bed. She took no salary while running the Gates 
     Foundation.
       After the couple bought a restored brownstone near Dupont 
     Circle, Stonesifer began exploring Washington by foot and 
     Metro.
       ``I was amazed at how there is a city within a city here,'' 
     she said, reeling off the stats: 110,000 households live in 
     poverty, one in three households with children can't afford 
     enough food. ``This idea that the District has so much child 
     hunger, it's mind-boggling.''
       Stonesifer decided she needed some time in the trenches. 
     Nothing would teach her, and her peers in the foundation 
     world, more about these intractable problems than confronting 
     them, year after year, in the faces of the people who suffer 
     them.
       And then she saw the CEO-wanted ad for Martha's Table.
       ``I decided to raise my hand,'' she said.
       Her husband said he was surprised, at first.
       ``I said, `Are you going to be adding the salt to the 
     soup?' '' Kinsley recalled, sitting with Stonesifer in their 
     living room after her coffee-shop meetings were over. The 
     walls were covered with paintings by Seattle artists, misty 
     mountain ranges and tulip fields. ``But I shouldn't have been 
     surprised. You said you wanted to do something hands-on.''
       ``You didn't really believe me,'' she said. ``You thought I 
     should be a university head.''
       ``Yes, run a college,'' he said, ``maybe the World Bank.''
       ``It's nice to have a husband who thinks you can do 
     anything.'' She leaned over to pat his leg.
       ``You'll get your turn at running Hewlett-Packard, I 
     assume,'' Kinsley said.
       She shot him a look.
       ``Joke! Joke!'' he said.
       The right person
       First she had to get this job.
       ``Even if she comes from a major philanthropy and is so 
     well-known, we had to make sure we were hiring the right 
     person for Martha's Table,'' Sulzberger said of the long 
     vetting Stonesifer went through. ``This may be a smaller 
     stage, but it's not a small job for anybody.''
       Martha's Table started in 1980 as a place for hungry 
     students to get an after-school sandwich. Its ``McKenna's 
     Wagon'' food vans have been mealtime fixtures at McPherson 
     Square and other gathering spots for the homeless for 
     decades. Now, it serves more than 1,100 people a day with 
     meals and early-childhood and after-school programs.
       The group's legion of volunteers is legendary: A roll of 
     more than 10,000 school kids, poor people and the occasional 
     president who chop vegetables and build sandwiches.
       Now, the organization wants to make a leap.
       ``I think Martha's Table is ready for the next stage,'' 
     said Linda Moore, founder of the E.W. Stokes Charter School 
     in Northeast Washington and longtime board member. ``Even 
     though I'm not sure what that is, we were looking for a 
     leader to take us there.''
       Stonesifer got the job. The head of the Gates Foundation 
     U.S. programs, Allan Golston, sent congratulations. So did 
     Sylvia Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation. Even 
     Stonesifer's old boss thought it was a good move.
       ``I think it blends all the elements she loves in 
     philanthropy,'' Melinda Gates said by e-mail. ``Even when 
     living in Seattle, she did hands-on work at a local charity--
     anonymously. That type of work keeps you grounded in the real 
     issues in people's lives.''
       Again, she will work for free, but she will also work for 
     real. She expects long hours. This is not, she insisted (with 
     some heat) a ``retirement'' job.
       She's heard that one before, after she left Microsoft and 
     agreed to run Bill Gates's library initiative.
       `` `Oh, she's going to convert libraries to the Internet, 
     how sweet.' Well, it wasn't sweet at all,'' Stonesifer said. 
     ``We added 11,000 libraries to the Web, and that group went 
     on to become the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.''
       No stepping back.
       On a taxi ride from her house to a meeting of philanthropy 
     leaders at the Hotel Monaco, she described her biggest 
     concern: that people will assume she can connect a funding 
     hose from Martha's Table to the Gates Foundation and the 
     coffers will be full forever.
       Not gonna happen.
       ``That's not what they do, and that's not what Martha's 
     Table needs,'' she said. ``The strength of Martha's Table is 
     in the thousands of small donors and volunteers that ensure 
     we deliver services every day. I don't want my coming here to 
     make people step back in any way.''
       The cabdriver leaned back. ``You work for Martha's Table?'' 
     he asked in a strong Ethiopian accent.
       Stonesifer hesitated. ``I'm going to.''
       ``It's a good charity,'' the man said. He picks up 
     volunteers there all the time, he explained, young people who 
     need a ride home. Thinking of his own two children in 
     Virginia colleges, he doesn't take their money.
       ``You'd have to be mentally handicapped to charge somebody 
     doing what they do,'' he said. ``You work for Martha's Table, 
     I won't charge you, either.''
       Stonesifer put a hand on his shoulder, even as she insisted 
     he take the money from her hand. ``You dear, sweet man,'' she 
     said. ``God bless you.''
       On the curb, she exulted.
       ``That's the power of Martha's Table,'' she said. ``A man 
     driving a cab and putting two kids through school. That's 
     what we have to work with. I'm so excited.''

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