At the age of 18, I became aware of my relative privilege in an airport in Sudan. My father, a hydraulics engineer, specializing in public health, was experienced with the challenges of being an American working in the tropics. Anticipating an unpleasant encounter with the customs soldiers, he prompted my sisters and me to walk ahead as my brown-skinned stepmother trailed behind with her head down. As we girls passed by, the soldiers smiled and let the family through. I understood that my light skin, blond hair, and blue eyes helped the family navigate the soldiers, guns, bribes, and potential confiscation of luggage. But looking back at my stepmother, I realized she was playing another crucial role of trying to pass as our maid. It was a long-lasting lesson in power, racism, and sexism.
In Massachusetts, I saw my parents attempt to change these power dynamics and create change through their feminist, civil rights, political work. From picketing Boston Woolworth lunch counters to refusing federal taxation in protest of the Vietnam War and participating in non-violent demonstrations alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., I witnessed their consistent acts of courage. And whenever possible, I joined them. Some of my fondest memories are enjoying my parents and community members delivering surprise care baskets to each other’s doorsteps during the winter. These moments taught me what it looks like to listen, respond, and create a powerful, loving community.
And that’s exactly what I attempted to do in my second year at Colby College. The campus felt empty as students started going home for summer break. My friend was outside her dorm in broad daylight, about to enter her room, when she was sexually assaulted. I was incredulous that the college wanted to keep it quiet. I had imagined they would care for her and protect the rest of us. And I was further hurt by the dean of students, a woman, who had not stood up for us. While I understood her nuanced position as the first female dean, we had no tolerance for inaction. We rallied and occupied her office until she heard us. For the first time, I saw the undeniable need and power of local organizing. The dean of students and the whole administration addressed what we all know today to be an issue that expands beyond college campuses. My friend dropped out of college. And I had a newfound feeling of indignation, determination, and evidence that we could change policy and culture.
That feeling emerged again when I traveled to Sudan with my parents, where female genital mutilation and other forms of oppression of women took place. And again, when I began teaching Health and Biology at a catholic high school. I remember trying to respect the institutional values of the Sisters I was teaching with. But I also wanted to respect my students’ need for care and information, so they wouldn’t be having sex or becoming pregnant before they were ready. Around this time, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was just starting.
I quit my job as a teacher and went back to school to study Teaching and Learning at Harvard Graduate School of Education. For a while, I cleaned apartments to help make ends meet and pay off my college debt. Then, a few months into what we now call the HIV/AIDS epidemic, I got a job with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. It was during this time that I began to understand the need to organize around politics and money. The virus didn’t discriminate based on race, age, gender, income, national origin, or sexuality. But the treatment lines did, and the sense of deserving care and treatment did too. The only justice I was seeing came from naming the brutality. Justice came from communities standing up for each other, from those with privilege using it to insist on better conditions, from so many acts of love and anonymous donations helping to maintain our struggling programs afloat. I learned so much about what it takes to move hearts, minds, policy, and budget.
My life partner Greg and I joined forces to raise our children in bicultural, bilingual public schools; as world citizens and caring social justice advocates—following the best of what our parents had modeled—using our privilege and passion to construct better conditions for each other. After the family sold the publishing business, it was clear from the stacks of direct mail appeals on my dining room table that—no matter how I organized them—giving money to each was scattershot and not effective. In fact, each appeal for the environment, scholarships, advocacy, women’s rights, racial equity weren’t obviously connected. When I think about all the women in my life—my stepmother, college friend, students, anonymous women donors, and people with HIV waiting for substance abuse treatment—they are the ones that helped shape my understanding of these everyday intersecting disparities.
It became clear that money alone could not help the cause of all these people. I needed to think about root causes and transform my money into political power. With this realization, we started Access Strategies Fund to harness the power of under-resourced communities, so they could create the conditions to thrive.
A parallel process was to figure out how to invest this endowment well. I felt prepared and excited. We had done our research, I had a new suit on, my partner by my side, and I was ready to interview advisors. The feeling of excitement quickly disappeared and was tempered with the heartbreaking reality that the financial sector makes money by extracting wealth from working-class people and the earth, with no care for our collective humanity. We interviewed male accountants and advisors, who would immediately greet my husband and begin talking to him. It was hard to overcome my lack of financial training and their lack of interest. But my loved ones supported me. We hired some great people, and I knew that my vision to use the investments to create true, lasting change in line with the community’s needs, would eventually work. Our advisors are pioneers in injecting values into this system, but it’s an ongoing effort.
These past decades I have been immersed in community with the people who make this world better; long friendships, shared successes, groaning failures, personal and professional growth, mutual commitments to keep working at it, and a huge disruptive phase in which to bring it home.