RE LOG - Spring 2017

To Continue... Willy Foote ’86 continued from page 15 Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber ’85 continued from page 19 different advisory services that are entirely philanthropically funded. It’s like a mini-MBA for rural business leaders and farmers. Our clients are the lynchpins for prosperity in these regions, and they grow the food (and coffee!) on which millions of people rely. I believe that these high-impact agricultural businesses are the most powerful force for solving the most urgent social and environmental challenges. How do you describe your work to friends? In the beginning, even my parents didn’t know what I was doing. You have to believe. You have to champion. You have to evangelize. By 2006, social entrepreneurship became a “thing.” So it wasn’t until then that I had a way to describe what the hell my career was. Before that, I just was a little bit crazy. What’s the best part of all this? One of the things I’m proudest of is my 130 colleagues. About a third of us are located in Cambridge, Mass.; the rest are in Africa and Latin America. Our teams are local. Some colleagues are former clients. Many are farmers themselves. Last year, Root Capital loaned $160 million and provided training to nearly 300 small- and medium-sized businesses that reach about 500,000 farming families – or about 2.5 million people – in 20 countries, and we’re especially focused on partnering with businesses that are led by women. You can find out much more at RootCapital. org! And over the years, I’ve seen what happens when these businesses thrive; they become engines of impact: food security improves, family incomes rise, women get their fair share, ecosystems are sustained, young people have opportunities to lead, and rural communities are transformed. By raising philanthropic contributions here in the U.S. and blending it with investment capital, we can provide the financial resources and management training to those who need it most. What we’re doing is way beyond what I had imagined originally, but now I’ve realized that we’re just getting started. the CDC, the Department of Defense, and the NRA), and a focus on advocacy. The Marines brought me in with a total force roll-out and training of all support workers – meaning legal assistants are asking – and that helped them achieve an amazing reduction in suicides: 22 percent. I would hear from schools in South Africa, the frontlines of Afghanistan. I would be on my phone at 5 a.m. training an Air Force base in Germany. At Princeton University, we’re training the athletic coaches, the resident advisors, and the security. The grassroots has been incredibly exciting. All of these national and global efforts were happening at the same time. It’s all happened in 12 years. It has been quite a surreal journey where one week I’m meeting with heads of countries, like Israel and Cypress, and another week I’m training homeless veterans. Now every school teacher in Israel has the Columbia in their hands and the power of “just asking” has been startling. Government officials in Israel in charge of suicide prevention ... said it’s literally changing the way they live their lives, breaking down barriers that have been built up over thousands of years. To be able to help affect this culture shift has been so rewarding. You have also received awards related to your work in education: At the same time, I became a philanthropist focused on education. One of the first things that I helped build was the first effort to fix failing schools – which many believe is the first step to addressing the larger issue of poverty. It’s called Turnaround for Children; I was the founding chair of the board. That has been incredibly impactful and it was often presented as a fundamental priority of President Obama’s education platform. At the same time, after my children had an extraordinary experience attending a gifted preschool at Columbia, I ended up founding a K-8 school called the Speyer Legacy School, the first independent school in Manhattan to serve these kids, with an unprecedented commitment to diversity and aid. When I originally did this I didn’t realize that this would be an issue of great education reform significance. What I realized, and many thought, is that the most underserved child in the nation is the low-income, high-achieving student, the poor, talented kid. Both of those efforts have been really meaningful. Have you been surprised by your success? Yes, surreally so! But more importantly, I am profoundly grateful. I found myself in many situations I could never have dreamed of. I had never even given a major speech [back in 2004], and suddenly I am commissioned by the FDA to set up the standards to make sense of critical questions about suicide. Here I am speaking in front of the media, and speaking for the FDA. It took an understanding of how to take information and make it meaningful, as well as courage and frankly the optimism that anything is achievable – an attitude I would have to credit back to those formative years while in high school. That was an incredibly exciting time, and that began a lot of this. Suicide is preventable and I am so very grateful to be able to help us get closer to a world without suicide, and to help people across the globe and their families and communities prevent this unnecessary loss of life. SPRING 2017 Ransom Everglades LOG 65