The Stern Opportunity

Anne Reese Stern MBA 1982

How does a career in finance evolve into a personal and professional commitment to effective and ethical adoption policy and practice? How did this mother double the number of children she and her husband were raising to 6 from 3, while co-founding and co-directing the Center of Adoption Policy Studies? L&L spoke with Ann N. Reese, Langone 1982, who has parlayed her success in corporate America not only into effective advocacy for children’s rights, but also into a call for the application of the rigorous metrics of the business world to the not-for-profit space.

Let’s start with your career path. What brought you to your current position at the Center for Adoption Policy?

I graduated from Penn in 1974 and went into something that does not exist anymore: a commercial-lending training program. At the end of the training program there really was no loan demand so I went and became a foreign exchange trader. One of my clients was Union Carbide and it was during that period of time that I started to get an MBA at night. I then moved to Mobile Oil. I got my MBA in 1982. Then Mobile Oil relocated and at that point I moved to International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) where I held a number of finance jobs and ultimately became the Chief Financial Office… until we sold the company in 1998.

When you went to Stern what did you see yourself doing in the future?

I was interested in finance, but at that time I was interested in large companies that had a career path to the top, which generally involved stints in operations. And so I wanted to work something like that into my career.

Now, fast- forward to 2010 and you are doing something entirely different. How did you get here?

After I left ITT I worked for Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which is a private equity firm. While I was there I adopted my two youngest children from Romania. I have three biological children, and our two adopted children, Ileana and Traian, were brought home in 2000.

I am curious and fascinated: what compelled you to adopt?

I always wanted to adopt. I started trying to adopt in the U.S. and because we had biological children and most children in the U.S. foster-care system are children of color, somebody finally said they were not going to place any children with us, which is why we decided to pursue international adoption. At the time I did not know that that was illegal. But that experience is one of the things that propelled me to do the work that I do today… I had no intention of changing the path I was on at the time that I adopted Ilana and Triun. I had been in corporate America, and I was now in a private equity firm and I was going to keep on doing it…But the hitting of the brick wall happened in 2000: one of my closest friends who had a child the same age as my eldest son died of breast cancer and I became a foster parent to her daughter. She came to live with me in June, the same time I brought over Ilana and Triun who at the time were 19 and 21 months and very developmentally delayed…We had taken our family from 3 kids to 6 kids in one month…By December that year it felt like things were going off the rails. It was the first time in my career that I could say that I really felt that I could not juggle it… So reluctantly I left Clayton, Dubilier, & Rice, fully intending to get things organized and go back.

What is your advice to students who find themselves at these sorts of crossroads in their careers, either early on or later in life?

It was a tough decision in that I did not want to disappoint people but what I decided to do was to recognize my limits and not do a bad job at a lot of things… It was so critical to do what I had to do for my children. It probably should have been a harder decision than it was, but at the time it was just very clear…And because it occurred [later] in my career, I had the financial security, which a lot of people do not have.

I am curious as to whether your background in business and education helped you when you were navigating the adoption process and now in your role at the organization?

In order to do well in any career you have to have a network of relationships; you have to be someone whose word can be relied upon, and you have to be somebody who just figures out ways to get things done. Luckily in most of my assignments in my career there were problem-solving aspects and big projects to work on, and those skills help you,

Tell us about transitioning from the for-profit to the not-for-profit space.

It was a big transition for me to go to the for-profit to the non-profit world. Things do tend to work in a different way. There’s more of a sense of urgency and bottom-line and what I would call results-based or outcomes-based assessments of what you do. I have been frustrated to find in the not-for-profit world that there is a lot of ideology that governs policies and procedures that is not subjected to the rigorous tests that happen in the business world.

But since starting in the non-profit space have you seen more of a move toward the more metrics based approach?

I think as donors, people are pushing toward that. I am on the board of overseers at the Penn School of Social Policy & Practice, and one of the centers of the school is the Center of High Impact Philanthropy…I think that one of the next big challenges we have is the efficient allocation of resources in the not-for-profit world. [The sector is] evolving with things like Charity Navigator but there is not a disciplined approach to making sure that philanthropic dollars are used effectively and produce outcomes.

Let’s talk specifically about what you are doing now in Haiti. I am really curious about your current involvement with Haitian orphans. What are some of the challenges?

First, the Center for Adoption Policy, our mission is to remove barriers to adoption. From our point of view, if it’s not ethical, legal and transparent, it is not adoption. …To put the numbers in context in Haiti, there were 380,000 orphans prior to the earthquake. Many of them have living parents who for many reasons, poverty being one, are living in orphanages. Of those children, roughly 50 were far enough in the adoption process that their potential adoptive parents could bring them into the US. We immediately worked as part of a larger coalition, the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. We worked with our State Department to apply a process of Humanitarian Parole to all of the children in Haitian orphanages who had been matched to potential adoptive parents prior to the earthquake. They come to the US while their visa process is completed. Ideally that could be as many as 600 to 800 kids.

I think we’d be interested in knowing how you think in the coming years MBAs can use their degrees and their experience to create social impact.

The same discipline that motivates people who believe in a free market society should be applied to working in the not-for-profit and social impact space. Giving individuals opportunities to reach their potential should be a framework for everyone to think about. And so when you think within that framework, making sure that we do not set goals like “Child Survival.” We do not set a business goal as “Company survival,” we set the goals as growth and development. So setting appropriate goals for social policies and expected philanthropic outcomes…the discipline that people can bring in that sphere is very important… I have not stepped away completely from business. I still serve on the board of Sears Holdings and Jones Apparel… I have taken the finance part of my career and transitioned it into that as well. You never have to leave or completely abandon your skills to step out into a new direction.

I had a great experience at Stern and I am more than happy to talk to anybody. And if there is anybody who wants to interface, I would be more than happy to reach out.

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