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....continued from Background Page
After graduating from Wharton in 1963 I joined
the International Division of Colgate Palmolive. I spent
2 years in training in New York including six months at
a large advertising agency and 6 months as a salesman working
in Harlem, Jersey City and the lower East Side. In 1965
I became Director of Marketing for Colgate’s very
profitable subsidiary in Thailand. I was in charge of the
sales force and handled advertising, promotion and market
research.
In part because of a family history of public service
and in part to participate in the excitement of the 1ate
1960s, I returned to the United States in 1968 and took
a position in the International Division of the Office of
Management and Budget which is located in the Executive
Office of the President. My responsibilities involved oversight
of large portions of the program and budget for the US Agency
for International Development and the preparation of recommendations
to the President regarding foreign aid funding and priorities.
I stayed in this position for 5 years with increasing levels
of responsibility. In 1973 I was asked to join the Agency
and I became the Director of Budget and Planning. In that
capacity I was responsible for managing a staff of 25 economists
and financial analysts and for the preparation and monitoring
of a budget of about $5 billion. In addition to my budget
work, during this period I was heavily involved in several
Agency-wide re-organizations and I worked closely with the
Agency’s legislative office and with the staffs of
various congressional committees to bring these changes
into effect.
In 1978 I was awarded a fellowship at the Center
for International Affairs at Harvard and took a leave of
absence from the Agency in order to pursue studies in international
economics and development. I returned to USAID in the fall
of 1979 and was assigned to a small group located in the
Executive Office that was working on an initiative to establish
a small Federal Agency that would promote scientific collaboration
between the United States and the developing countries.
While this important initiative was ultimately not successful
it provided an opportunity for me to familiarize myself
with a wide range of social, economic and environmental
global issues.
In 1980 I left USAID to become Vice President for
the Overseas Development Council, a policy research and
advocacy organization devoted to issues of international
development. In my new capacity I was in charge of long
range planning, fund raising, board development, financial
management and a range of other managerial functions. Unfortunately,
in 1982 ODC’s support from the Ford Foundation was
significantly reduced. The organization went through a staff
reduction and I was forced to leave. The departure was difficult
and painful but my two years at ODC provided a first hand
opportunity to learn about non-profit management, organizational
development, how to work with a prestigious Board of Directors
(the ODC board was then chaired by Robert McNamara) and
how to cope with the complex cultural dynamics of a social
purpose organization.
In 1983, as an experiment, my family and I moved
to a remote farm in the Green Mountains of central Vermont.
I had been lucky enough to inherit the farm and I had the
mesmerizing idea of a combining a life of international
consulting with the life of a shepherd. My first consultancy
was with the World Resources Institute where I prepared
a study of US foundation interest in global environmental
issues. I was then asked by USAID to do a study of the management
problems facing America’s international non-profits.
USAID was beginning to support these groups and wanted to
better understand their strengths and weaknesses. This report
led to a series of subsequent studies dealing with non-profit
fund raising, non-profit governance, the pros and cons of
providing government funds to non-profit organizations and
the operation of the US government’s emergency food
program. Gradually, my consultancies began to shift away
from broad studies and reports to individual evaluations
of the programs and operations of non-profit organizations.
Initially, these were funded by donors such USAID, the UNDP
or the World Bank but increasingly I was asked to work directly
with an organization to help them deal with an issue such
as a transition in executive leadership, a problem in board/staff
relations, the preparation of a strategic plan, a feasibility
study or the design of a new organizational structure.
As a supplement to my consulting work, I became
increasingly active on the Boards of both commercial and
non-profit organizations. In 1987 I joined the Board of
Development Alternatives, then a small consulting firm located
in Washington, DC and stayed on the Board for 16 years.
I also became a Trustee of Green Mountain College, the Vermont
Arts Council, the Vermont Natural Resources Council and
Spring Lake Ranch, a unique care facility for those with
addictive and/or emotional problems located in Shrewsbury,
Vermont. I found that this volunteer work complemented my
consulting by giving me a first hand perspective on the
difficulties that managers’ face and a more nuanced
appreciation of the challenges inherent in board governance.
In the last 25 years I have worked with over 50
clients in the United States and overseas within the rubric
of what is imperfectly called organizational development.
Roughly half of these have been donor-mandated evaluations
or organizational assessments while the balance involve
a direct relationship working together on an organizational,
governance or leadership issue. In addition to these consultancies,
I have written several comprehensive reports dealing with
such subjects as the emergence of civil society in Central
and Eastern Europe, a retrospective assessment of 35 years
of government support to international non-profits and a
series of studies for the Advisory Committee on Foreign
Aid dealing with organizational effectiveness, changing
global conditions and the dependency of international non-profits
on government support.
My dream of becoming a shepherd was successful,
albeit not profitable. Beaver Meadow Mountain Lamb flourished
for 15 years with much hard work and visions of sustainability.
I learned a great deal about small enterprise management
and the pleasure of moonlit nights in a lambing barn.
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