[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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