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2008 POWER LIST

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Thinking Locally, Acting Globally

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C R E A T I N G T H E C O D E S that allowed for the ascendance of the PC was a mighty productive and profitable venture for Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. But the entrepreneurial act of a lifetime for our homegrown computer genius, and his wife, Melinda, has to be their decision to tackle the woeful deficiencies plaguing the world’s ultimate software—humankind—via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As 2008 witnessed the groundbreaking (in July) for the foundation’s expansive new headquarters adjacent to the Seattle Center, the depositing (also in July) of the largest—$1.8 billion—installment from foundation trustee Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates’ stepping down (in June) from Microsoft in order to focus solely

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, co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sit at the head of the table surrounded by their management committee, never before assembled for a photo. All except Geoffrey Lamb are based at the foundation’s Seattle headquarters. Clockwise from behind Melinda, , president, U.S.Program;

, foundation co-chair;

, chief financial officer;

, president, Global Development Program;

, chief communications officer; , chief administrative officer;

, chief of staff to CEO; , managing

director, public policy; , general counsel

and secretary; , M.D.,

president, Global Health Program; , chief executive officer.

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on the foundation, we felt compelled to mark the moment.

Amid the billions the foundation spends across the globe, it’s easy to lose sight of the millions it spends at home as part of its U.S. Program, one of three grant areas; the other two are Global Development and Global Health.

A core piece of the U.S. Program is the Pacific Northwest initiative, which, each year, allocates some $38 million to address the educational ills and needs of at-risk families in Washington state and the Portland area. As well as a host of large-scale efforts, including a statewide program to expand Internet access in public libraries and expanding access to quality early learning programs (includ-ing building two early-learning facili-ties in the low-income communities of White Center and Yakima), we benefit from a raft of smaller “responsive grant making” not offered to other states, rang-ing from a $100,000 youth development grant serving Seattle’s Southern Sudanese immigrants to a $310,000 grant helping to build a community center in Sand Point. Explains Pacific Northwest director David Bley, “We will do grant making for after-school activities....We’ll do grant making around domestic violence. Any-thing that can help stabilize the family, with the theory being, one, we’re giving back to the community and, two, a stable family then enables the parents and kids to focus on really what matters, which is educational attainment.”

One of the foundation’s most for-midable missions in Washington state is eradicating family homeless-ness. A $40 million grant for the Sound Families Initiative, launched in 2000, created 1,445 new tran-sitional housing units in Snohom-ish, King and Pierce counties; next year, the foundation, in concert with state, county and city govern-ments, plans to unleash an even more ambitious effort. “We want to put more emphasis on prevention [and in] creating a real system,” explains Bley. “If you’re a homeless mom today with a kid...it would be

like to think about the fact that because of some check we wrote, there’s a woman and three kids that aren’t going to sleep in a car tonight.” He adds, “Our society doesn’t work perfectly.... But one thing that does help it work better is a large philanthropic sector, and I haven’t the slightest doubt that this area is way bet-ter off than it would be if there were no

Gates Foundation.” Much like a for-profit business,

the foundation focuses on spend-ing smart. It typically works with existing organizations and only funds 20 percent of a project, with the balance coming from somewhere else. Explains Bley: “We don’t have enough money to solve all the world’s problems, and if we tried we’d run out of money.” In 2006, the foundation also cre-ated the Big Brother–sounding department of Impact Planning and Improvement, overseen by director Fay Twersky, that’s charged with helping to formulate specific

dumb luck as to whether you got really high-quality care or no care, or something in between. We just make it very difficult for these families to be successful. So we’re going to make it easier for them.” Family homelessness is an issue that particularly touches Bill’s and Melinda’s hearts, says Bill Gates Sr., who spends much of his time working with Bley on local giving. “I

The Currency of People

2008 PERSONS OF THE YEAR

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grant goals and to measure their efficacy over time.

By far the biggest chunk of the foun-dation’s fortune, to date $9.6 billion, is directed at improving the health of the world’s poorest people. Linked to an intricate web of global partnerships, the foundation has issued comprehensive grants targeting the HIV/AIDS crisis, reproductive health, malnutrition and vaccine research. A $258 million grant to Ballard-based PATH, one of the founda-tion’s biggest partners, has led to a vaccine showing 58 percent efficacy in treating infants for uncomplicated malaria.

Meanwhile, since 2000, the foundation has helped avert an estimated 2.9 mil-lion deaths, mostly in India and Africa, by simply helping provide vaccines for common diseases. “There are many, many causes of death, but one of the best inter-ventions is a vaccine, because it’s relatively low cost and it prevents death rather than treat patients once they get sick,” says Tadataka “Tachi” Yamada, M.D., presi-dent of the foundation’s Global Health Program. Adds Yamada, “We’re going to find an HIV vaccine, we’re going to find a malaria vaccine, we’re going to really make a big impact on TB through vaccines….We may not be able to do it tomorrow, but we’re here for the long run.”

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KNUTE BERGERBONNIE

BEUKEMADANA BOS

C.R. DOUGLASJEAN GODDENNANCY GUPPY

WIER HARMANDENIS HAYES

PRAMILA JAYAPALJAMES KEBLAS

ED LAZOWSKA

LAWRENCE R. ROBINSON, M.D.

PETER STEINBRUECK

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Storm Troopers

BIO: The 50-year-old Kansas native has served as deputy mayor and legal counsel to the mayor under former Mayor Norm Rice; chair of the Washington State Utili-ties and Transportation Commission; and founding judge of Seattle’s Mental Health Court. In the ’90s, she helped bring the city its first professional women’s basketball team, the now-defunct Seattle Reign.WHY SHE’S ON THE LIST: Levinson forged Force 10 Hoops, composed of local businesswomen, philanthropists and fellow Storm season-ticket holders Lisa Brummel, Ginny Gilder (a 1984 Olympic medalist in rowing) and Dawn Trudeau, and negotiated the $10 million purchase of the Storm. Levinson says Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett, who bought the Sonics and the Storm in 2006, had rejected previous bids to buy the Storm. However, as a soap-opera-ish rift over keeping the Sonics in town opened wide in the summer of 2007, Levinson began closing in on a Storm purchase. Key to their success, says Levinson, was taking a positive tack with Bennett. “We had to make the case that we could do things differently, whatever negative things they’d been through [with the Sonics]”—including not playing out the Storm’s negotiations in the papers. After six months of low-profile finessing, the Storm was officially purchased in January 2008. “None of us ever woke up in high school thinking, ‘We want to be a sports team owner,’” marvels Levinson. “When we grew up, there was not a lot of opportunity to compete [in sports], few oppor-tunities to coach, fewer to manage and none to be owners. Now we have five of the best women in the world in the game playing for the Storm…and women as owners. It’s just pretty remarkable.”WHAT’S UP NEXT: Renegotiating the KeyArena lease (which extends through 2010), increasing season-ticket holders and broadening sponsorships. Says Levinson, “We’re not saving the team if we don’t put it on a solid financial footing. We want to make sure it is not at risk again.” Shannon O’Leary

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Indie Act

BIO: Fleet Foxes was born when Robin Pecknold, 22, lead singer/songwriter, and Skye Skjelset, 22, guitarist—who began their musical collaboration while students at Lake Washington High School—joined with Seattleites Casey Wescott, 27, keyboardist; Christian Wargo, 31, bassist; and Josh Tillman, 27, drummer.WHY THEY’RE ON LIST: After signing with iconic Seattle indie label Sub Pop in January, they followed up in April with their much-blogged-about EP release Sun Giant, and then in June with their first full-length, self-titled album, helmed by famed Seattle producer Phil Ek. It’s earned them superlative ink and air play (online, on radio and on TV), and they’ve quickly become a much-sought-after live act—some critics have hailed them as “America’s Next Greatest Band.” While they sidestep the hype, maintaining an appropriately Seattle low-key attitude (Pecknold’s older sister, former Seattle Weekly music writer Aja, still serves as their tour manager), we believe Fleet Foxes’ ethereal, layered harmonies of vocals, guitars, mandolins, organs, dulcimers, tom-toms and more, often labeled “baroque harmonic pop” (think Beach Boys meets Band of Horses), have earned them a spot on Seattle’s long playlist of original sounds. Shannon O’Leary

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Pick-up Man

BIO: Martin, 41, was born in New York City and attended Vassar College before moving west. A former marketing consultant, he now lives in Madrona with his wife and two children, and is an avid recreational rower. WHY HE’S ON THE LIST: After moving to Pioneer Square in 1995, Martin became disgusted by the neighborhood’s dumpster-filled alleys, which often hosted drug users, rats and festering piles of trash. In 1997, he began a grassroots, street-level effort to clean up the mess and ended up founding CleanScapes, a garbage, recycling and composting service that promotes dumpster-free refuse removal. Since then, he has single-handedly inspired residential and corporate consumers to drastically rethink their trash-shucking habits. “No one plans on going into the garbage busi-ness. I literally just fell into it,” Martin says. “I lived in Pioneer Square, above an alley that was, in many ways, its own little garbage dump. It just seemed like there had to be a better way.” In 2007, Martin led CleanScapes to new heights—the company landed half of the city of Seattle’s refuse removal contracts, beginning in April 2009. CleanScapes is also the sole provider of garbage, recycling and composting services for the entire city of Shoreline. In addition, Martin expanded CleanScapes’ operations to portions of Portland and San Francisco.MOST IRONIC TRASH DISCOVERY: “I’ve found hand-books on sustainability. Big, paper documents that should have been recycled instead of put in the garbage.”WHAT’S IN HIS GARBAGE CAN: “Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream containers. Plus whatever my kids put in there. That and a lot of dog poop.” BIGGEST INFLUENCE: Huey Long, the populist gover-nor of Louisiana from 1928 through 1932. Long pushed for radical social reforms, ran against FDR in the 1932 Democratic primary and was assassinated in 1935 inside the Louisiana Capitol. “He led a colorful life,” Martin says. “I just like the guy.” Nick Horton

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The Last Crusader

BIO: Gardner, 72, a University of Washington grad, Weyerhaeuser heir and lifelong Demo-crat, was a two-term governor (1985–1993) in Washington state and U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Swit-zerland (1994).WHY HE’S ON THE LIST: Diagnosed in 1995 with Parkinson’s disease, Gardner spearheaded and is a leading donor to the “Death with Dignity” initiative on this November’s ballot. “I’ve always liked to be in control of my own destiny,” he says. “I can’t take my own life in this state. And so I decided I would put together a state-of-the-art piece of legislation.” Modeled on Oregon’s 1998 law (the only state permitting physician-assisted suicide, also called aid-in-dying), Initiative 1000 would “allow mentally competent, terminally ill adult residents of Washington state diagnosed with six months or less to live the legal choice to obtain and self-administer life-ending medication.” The initiative faces a determined opposition, primar-ily from the Catholic Church, and critics have accused Gardner both of self-serving motives and of “playing God,” as his son charged in a 2007 New York Times Magazine cover story. Still, though he thinks it will be a close vote, Gardner is confident that his final campaign will be a winning one.NEXT UP: Gardner’s views on the issue will live on in his pull-no-punches memoir, The Final Say: My Campaign for Death with Dignity (Docu-mentary Media, 2008). Shannon O’Leary

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Co-conspirators

BIO: The Seattle-based, 30-something trio of John Sutton, Ben Beres and Zac Culler started collaborating in 1998 during a sculpture class at Cornish College for the Arts, when Sutton had a big idea—a drive-through art gallery (yes, literally)—and asked Beres and Culler to help him make it work. They’ve worked together ever since. WHY THEY’RE ON THE LIST: Sutton/Beres/Culler first gained atten-tion in 2005, when they “stranded” themselves on a cartoon-ish, handcrafted desert island anchored in Lake Washington in full view of the 520 bridge. The artful message-in-a-bottle was this: Snap out of your routine and see your surroundings in a new way. Their work continues to challenge viewers and often hinges on audience participation, as evidenced by their current projects. Just completed is a permanent installation, embedded in a city sidewalk at a Central District bus stop, commissioned by the Seattle Department of Transportation (another is likely to come in Magnolia). In the works for early

spring is an underground sculpture—a neon double helix, twisting down beneath a cast-glass manhole cover—at the Westlake terminus of the Seattle Streetcar. Finally, thanks to a hefty grant from the NYC-based Creative Capital, they are hard at work on “Mini-Mart City Park,” a project that takes “going green” seriously. The group is transforming an old gas station/convenience store in Georgetown into a sort of park-in-a-box. When finished (in late spring), the burst-open, reconfigured structure will overflow with living greenery—dirt floor, trees, grass—and have an indoor waterfall, path and bench for the public to enjoy. NEXT UP: They hope to expand their Mini-Mart City Park concept as an “eco-franchise,” establishing them in other cities. BIGGEST INFLUENCE: All three credit Cornish professor (and renowned sculptural artist) Cris Bruch for instilling in them the motivation and work ethic to make art. “Whenever we were feeling disgruntled with classes,” Sutton recalls, “Bruch would say, ‘School doesn’t matter, just work.’” Brangien Davis

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