BLOOMBERG TV INTERVIEW WITH JUDITH RODIN …

   BLOOMBERG TV




    INTERVIEW WITH
      JUDITH RODIN


           BY
     JUDY WOODRUFF


TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2008




          Transcript by
       Federal News Service
        Washington, D.C.
       JUDY WOODRUFF: Judith Rodin, thank you very much for talking with us.

       JUDITH RODIN: It's a pleasure, really.

        MS. WOODRUFF: This storied foundation you have taken over in the last few
years, the Rockefeller Foundation, has taken the lead now with its five-year initiative that
has to do with climate change. Why did you choose this issue?

        MS. RODIN: Well, climate change among many, I think, is the cornerstone of
the impact of globalization in the 21st century. You know, if you think about the last 50
years of human history, human behavior has impacted the climate more than the
remainder of human history put together. So it is the burning issue; it's the issue that not
only will impact our children as we talk about the future but climate change has already
occurred. We're seeing floods and hurricanes and sea level rises. And you can't pick up
the newspaper in a year and not see just massive evidence of climate change already
occurring. And we think it's affecting Americans; it's affecting people around the world;
and we want attention to it now ­ investment in renewable energy, planning, a very
different view about what our infrastructure ought to look like in the United States.

        MS. WOODRUFF: How much ­ and in fact how much harder is your work
because the government of the country, which is the biggest carbon emitter in the world
has said that this problem is exaggerated?

       MS. RODIN: Well, the IPCC that just won the Nobel Prize has thousands and
thousands ­

       MS. WOODRUFF: This is the international panel.

         MS. RODIN: The International Panel on Climate Change ­ thousands and
thousands of scientists who are producing volumes of data that suggests otherwise. So I
think we lack the political will in Washington to do it. But I don't think there is any
understanding at the present time that the data aren't there. There is a tremendous array
of options about what to do about it. We're about to let the renewable fuel tax credit
lapse in the United States. We're fighting about coal burning ­ there is technology out
there already to put the carbon emissions right back into the ground. We're not investing
in it in the United States. We're building roads instead of talking about light rail and
other kinds of infrastructure that is more environmentally friendly. We're about to
reauthorize the ICET, the transportation bill, which over the last several years has been
about road construction. You know, we were the envy of the world with our rail ­ our
passenger rail system 50 years ago. And we've let it deteriorate.
        So what are we doing? All of these are really ­ they're climate issues; they're
economic security issues; and they're equity issues. And we better confront them in an
integrated way if we're really going to confront what the 21st century challenges are.

       MS. WOODRUFF: Well, specifically on climate change, now that you've looked
so deeply into the issue, I know you're aware that many economists from the left all the
way to the right are saying, what is needed is in effect a carbon tax where there would be
appropriate rebates but you would take that money ­ you would use that money to do
something about all these issues and problems you've been discussing.

       MS. RODIN: Something is necessary to put a price on carbon, whether it's a
carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, which is another thing that other groups of
economists are suggesting.

        Secondly, a lot of the systems are going to be effective because they bring the
market in. The market has to play a role here, whether it's inventing new technologies
for renewables or trading carbon. And we see U.S. companies actually really step up.

        MS. WOODRUFF: Another of the number of initiatives that you've undertaken
here at Rockefeller is your ­ has to do with the green revolution, so-called. You've
teamed up with the Gates Foundation working with African governments and others in
the non-profit sector to improve the productivity, the income of farmers in Africa. For
people who don't understand that term and understand the importance of it, explain in lay
person's terms what it's all about.

        MS. RODIN: Well, it's great to start with a story. Newly elected Vice President
Henry Wallace in the 1950s was visiting Mexico. And everywhere he turned in the rural
areas, he saw hunger and abject poverty. He came back from Mexico, called the
president of the Rockefeller Foundation and said, what can you do about all of this
hunger? And Rockefeller had been supporting scientists, really look at conventional
breeding that might produce more robust crops, drought-resistant crops, crops that would
work in more deteriorated soil. And so, it decided to undertake what ultimately became a
green revolution for which Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize, brought that
then to Asia. And it's about really robust crops, working with the individual farmers
making ­ in Africa ­ her more able to really grow, working on soil depletion, water
resource management, creating markets. All of those together are necessary to create a
green revolution.

       MS. WOODRUFF: There are what 73,000 foundations in this country? But
many Americans don't really understand what they do. They seem opaque. Help us
understand the role of foundations as we move into the 21st century.

        MS. RODIN: Well, the role of foundations has really changed. I think in the 20th
century, foundations operated more as aid institutions. Some of them operated as
charities. But I think in the 21st century, foundations are looking to take on big thorny
problems, find partners who are willing to work on those problems with them, and often
now the partners are in the private sector.

        So we have public-private partnerships for the development of vaccines against
HIV or TB or malaria; public-private partnership between many of the pharmaceutical
companies and many of the foundations. Or a project that we just put together in New
Orleans and for New York City to build affordable housing where we brought a group of
foundations together to be the first money in. Then banks were willing to be lenders as
the second money in. And then, the city came behind it to guarantee it. The banks didn't
feel able to make some of those big loans to build affordable housing because they were
worried about default before the sub-prime mortgage period. And so, foundations came
in as the high-risk capital, first in line if there were defaults, with the corporate sector
behind them.

        So this is risk capital. It's tax-free money. And I think the best of us are really
saying, if we always get it right, we're not being risky enough. We're not picking big
enough problems. We're not making big enough bets. We expect to get it wrong
sometime. But we've got to be in there demonstrating pilots, what works, before we ask
others to work with us to take it to scale.

       MS. WOODRUFF: At the same time, some people have looked at foundations,
studied foundations and said, they're not accountable to anyone other than to their own
boards of trustees. Is that a problem for foundations broadly?

        MS. RODIN: I think accountable is a funny word because when we use it in the
private sector, it sounds like there is something simmering behind it that is non-
transparent. I think in the sense of foundations' lack of accountability it's that there is no
bottom line. There really often ­ although I think increasingly less so ­ is no
measurement of impact or outcome. Foundations have, for a long time, done well by just
caring a lot and really wanting to make it work and haven't measured themselves.

        So now, accountability ­ if we translate that to measuring for impact ­ I think all
of us in the foundation world are really looking for that, not only because we want to be
accountable ­ which I actually think is the least important part of this ­ but because you
want to know what works; you want to be able to take it to scale, bring other, quote,
"investors" in, so you really need measure you need a line of sight. You also need to be
able to make midcourse corrections. So all of those in the aggregate are accountabilities
of a sort because they're really allowing you to look for impact.

        MS. WOODRUFF: The author of a book that came out within the last year
looking at foundations, Joel Fleishman ­ you know him ­ made the argument that
foundations do need to be more transparent. And he does talk about accountability to
people on the outside who understand foundations. And he even talks about from a tax
standpoint that the government needs to do a better job of monitoring what foundations
are doing. How do you see that?
       MS. RODIN: I don't believe that. I don't agree with Joel who is a good friend
and with whom I agree on 99 percent of everything. But I think government regulations
of foundations would be an astonishing mistake.

         MS. WOODRUFF: From another direction, some members of Congress, most
notably Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has said, what needs to be done is
to repeal the estate tax. This is the money of course that people give away when they die.
If this is done, if it were done, how would affect foundations?

       MS. RODIN: Well, I'd like to think that it would affect foundations minimally.
Americans ­ the last time the data were collected ­ 2005 ­ Americans gave 35 billion
worth of either charity or foundations, gave philanthropy, but in the aggregate, what did
America do that year? We are an incredibly generous society, and people who are doing
that don't have the incomes that really have to do with the benefits of major tax credits.

        It is true that individuals of vast wealth do contemplate the tax sufficiency of
giving philanthropically. Certainly I saw that well as a university president trying to raise
money, and I see it in people establishing foundations. So I'm a psychologist. I believe
in incentives. Incentives are a good thing. It does produce positive behavior. And the
tax system that we have in the United States really has been one of the mechanisms
through which we have produced these enormous good-creating engines called
foundations.

       MS. WOODRUFF: So you are not in favor of repealing it.

       MS. RODIN: I am not.

         MS. WOODRUFF: Women ­ have to ask you about this ­ you were the first
woman to head up this foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation. You were the first
woman to be president of an Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania. Today,
what is it, half of the Ivy League schools have women. What's it going to take for the
rest of the country to catch up with these prestigious institutions?

        MS. RODIN: Well, we're in this great natural experiment, aren't we ­ (chuckles)
­ seeing the public's reaction to a woman candidate for president. And I think it's a very
interesting moment. I think that there still, as we looked at the percentage of women
attending Davos, which is the movers and shakers of the world, only 17 percent were
women.

       MS. WOODRUFF: The economic world ­

        MS. RODIN: World Economic Forum. I mean, many of us found that shocking.
If they had asked us to guess, we would have said 35, 40 percent, given the way we think
women are leading business and government, and the social sector, and yet, still, women
are viewed in an invitation-only event obviously as less significant leaders worldwide
than men. And it still is really a moment in which we have much, much more to
accomplish. Women are labeled ambitious and aggressive as they move up the
leadership ladder. Very rarely are those adjectives given to men who were engaging in
exactly the same behaviors.

        MS. WOODRUFF: Corporate America ­ you serve on three corporate boards
and I took a look, and even in these companies, there are few if any women in executive
positions, few in the board membership position, how can this be?

        MS. RODIN: Well, I think the same ­ really the same set of factors is playing.
Corporate boards are looking for women who have been in leadership positions in other
sectors. And if you have too few coming from other sectors, then it gets reanimated in
every other space where they're looking for women who have been in leadership roles.

       MS. WOODRUFF: Do you feel a personal responsibility to push the corporate
boards you're on to try to influence the institutions you're a part of?

         MS. RODIN: Yes. I feel a personal responsibility to do two things, to stop being
just a role model, which I think is too passive and to start being more of a mentor. So one
side of it is mentoring the women in the companies on the corporate boards that I serve.
So, for example, on AMR Ann Korologos and I are on that board. We meet with the
women in leadership. We talk with them a lot about their issues, not only as a company,
but their life issues, and we're actively playing a mentoring role, and we're trying to do
that in several other of the companies as well.

        So there's a pull and then there's a push in the boardroom really being the one
who's both advocating for the promotion of women, really pushing the companies to do
the right thing. And a lot of women are not in mega corporate America. They're running
their own businesses. They're in the small- and medium-size enterprise. And I think
they're finding a better lifestyle choice there. And it's allowing them to engage their
entrepreneurial spirit, be leaders, make money, but they're still not finding big corporate
America congenial to women.

      MS. WOODRUFF: You mentioned the presidential election. How important is it
symbolically to women that a woman be elected president do you think?

       MS. RODIN: No, I think it's important symbolically that a woman is running for
president. I think women will really look and ask themselves who is the best candidate.
And I think that's critical. But the fact that Hillary Clinton is running, that she represents
a change in American society where that is possible ­ I mean, many other countries have
had women leaders long before the United States, and so why should we have found it so
unimaginable..

        MS. WOODRUFF: On the other hand, how important would it be for the United
States to elect the first African American?
        MS. RODIN: Same answer. You know, it's stunning, and I've just come back
from India, and they are fascinated by what is going on in the American election. They
really understand the social impact of the first African American and the first woman
running, and they are admiring the United States in a way that we haven't seen lately.
And I think that's wonderful.

        MS. WOODRUFF: A couple more questions about Judith Rodin. You run this
foundation for three years, and an opening is coming up at the biggest foundation in the
world, the Gates Foundation. Would you ever be interested?

        MS. RODIN: Oh, no, not at all. You know, I was asked the same thing when I
was president at Penn: would I be interested in the presidency of institutions that people
thought might be bigger or whatever. I think you fall in love with an institution, you fall
in love with its mission and its value system. And the Rockefeller Foundation is one of
the oldest foundations, second to Carnegie in the United States. It was giving more
foreign aid than the United States government until the Second World War. So it has this
amazing legacy and history of impact of really solving big problems.

       MS. WOODRUFF: Well, just stepping back from that question, how important is
Gates to the foundation? They are the new kid on the block in essence. I mean, they are
­ they've only been around for a few years, and yet they've got all of this money.

        MS. RODIN: They are extremely important, but as Patty Stonesifer is fond of
saying, our entire giving budget is less than the public education budget of the State of
California for one year. So if we take it in perspective, none of us has enough money to
go it alone, to solve every problem. So we're all learning about partnering, about being
more entrepreneurial with our dollars..

        So we want for every one dollar a million to change. I mean, the prime example ­
and I think this will show and tell people why foundations matter. The planning process
in New Orleans was stalling for nine months. The federal money was not being released
because they needed an overall Louisiana plan. Mississippi had already gotten all of its
federal appropriated funding. We came down there and said we could help with the
planning process. It has to involve the experts because expertise matters. Politicians
have to start talking to one another again, but it's got to involve the people of New
Orleans in the rebuild. It's got to be equitable and fair in order for it to work.

        MS. WOODRUFF: How important is it that someone like you succeed in this
position because you are the first woman to do this? And you can talk about your
experiences at Penn as the first woman there.

        MS. RODIN: I felt it strongly at Penn. My whole first year, any time I was
talked about or written about, I was the new woman president. So new changed after the
second year, and my goal was that the woman part would drop off by the end of my 10
years if I had been really successful. But I know that it mattered when several of the
other universities doing searches wound up with a woman in their pool of consideration.
I was called and interviewed about what it was like being a woman leading a great
institution. It was actually stunning. And so it did matter very much.

       MS. WOODRUFF: And advice for other women moving into top positions of
leadership?

          MS. RODIN: I think to believe in yourself and stay the course. One of the things
that's still astonishing and all of the senior women leaders I know still talk about this ­ it
is still often the case that when you are in a meeting with men and you are the only
woman in the room . You will sit there and often say to yourself, why did they agree with
that when the man said it, and I said that five minutes ago and nobody paid attention to
it?

        MS. WOODRUFF: And that still happens to you?

        MS. RODIN: And that still happens. So you've got to believe in yourself; you've
got to really stay the course; you've got to lead with a moral compass. You can't look
down; you've got to put your head up and lead.

        MS. WOODRUFF: Very good note to end on. Judith Rodin, thank you very
much.

        MS. RODIN: Thank you, Judy.

        (END)