March 10, 2014 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Growing up in Alexandria, Va., in the 1950s, Judy Belk recalls that she and her sister were bused “right past a perfectly fine public school to a very separate and unequal colored school.”
That discrimination and the people who helped her family fight it were pivotal in shaping the spirit that landed Ms. Belk in senior roles in philanthropy, including her new appointment as head of the California Wellness Foundation, one of America’s wealthiest grant makers.
She says she became aware of the role that philanthropy could play when a civil-rights group decided that Alexandria was ripe for a test of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision ending school segregation.
“My mother raised her hand and said, ‘The Belk girls are in.’ But the money making that fight possible came mostly from philanthropists in the white community.”
Scholarship grants from anonymous donors later helped Ms. Belk attend Northwestern University.
“I am a poster child for what good strategic philanthropy can achieve,” she declares.
At the California Wellness Foundation, Ms. Belk, 61, will oversee $1-billion in assets and steer grants to nonprofits that promote health education and seek to improve access to medical treatment for the needy. The foundation is one of several funds created in the 1990s by a wave of sales of nonprofit health centers to for-profit businesses.
Broad Experience
Ms. Belk is leaving a position as senior vice president at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, where she has spent 10 years starting the group’s West Coast and Midwest branches. In that position, she was known for quizzing colleagues and clients alike on subjects ranging from coworkers’ hobbies to key issues in philanthropy, says Melissa Berman, head of Rockefeller.
“One time she gave the CEO of a Fortune 100 company a C minus” on a pop quiz about corporate giving, Ms. Berman says. “He was still reeling from the shock a year later, but he admitted she was right.”
Before going to Rockefeller, Ms. Belk served as vice president of global public affairs at Levi Strauss & Company, where she led efforts by the company and its philanthropic arm to fight AIDS and racism and promote economic development.
Cole Wilbur, the California Wellness Foundation’s interim president, says he has known Ms. Belk for many years and that she will be a strong leader.
“The money at this foundation has no value unless it’s well used, and I think Judy is going to do that in a most productive and effective way,” says Mr. Wilbur, who was president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation until 1999.
He adds that it is rare to find someone with the breadth of experience Ms. Belk brings to her new position. Besides having worked in both the corporate and nonprofit worlds, she has senior management experience in government, acquired as the public-affairs director for several city governments in the Bay Area.
“Her background plus her personality are a wonderful combination,” Mr. Wilbur says. “She is a fast learner and good listener, but also not afraid to speak her mind.”
Taking a Stand
At Levi Strauss, Ms. Belk’s determination to speak out got national attention.
In the mid-90s, she successfully persuaded the company to stop giving to the Boy Scouts of America unless the group changed its policy of banning gay people from its ranks—a position she urged other grant makers to adopt as well. (The charity recently revised that policy and now accepts gay members but not troop leaders.)
“I was the spokesperson for that effort. It was quite a firestorm,” she recalls. “But also a reminder that when you state your core values, you have to abide. You can’t be against discrimination as a foundation, have LGBT employees, and still give money to the Boy Scouts.”
She says her new role at the wellness foundation will give her even more chances to speak up for what she believes in.
“I have a big mouth,” she says. “I have an idea a minute, and I need to be in a setting that will allow me to be creative and color outside the lines.”
Filling Gaps in Care
Ms. Belk comes to the foundation at a critical time: She will work with the foundation’s board to create a new strategic plan, an effort that has been under way since last year. She has already participated in the planning process even though she won’t formally assume her new position until April.
Central to the strategic plan will be filling gaps in health care that persist despite passage of the federal Affordable Care Act.
Millions of state residents still lack medical care, Ms. Belk says, because they are undocumented immigrants or because many rural areas have too few medical clinics to serve all those who need help.
She also hopes to make the foundation’s grant-making process more transparent. Ms. Belk describes a recent conversation when one of the foundation’s beneficiaries told her, “I send in a grant application and either money or a decline letter comes out. But I have no idea who these people are or how decisions are made.”
As a result, Ms. Belk says, “I really want to demystify the philanthropic world for those very community groups we support.”
She plans to travel around the state meeting with as many grantees as she can. She also wants to “show off and play up” the organization’s board of directors, which she says is more diverse than typical foundation boards.
Her commitment to transparency apparently has limits, as Ms. Belk declined to disclose her salary to The Chronicle. Her pay, she pointed out, will eventually be available on the foundation’s informational tax returns.
As she prepares to settle into her new position, Ms. Belk says she is eager to help grass-roots groups—the kind that played a role in her childhood.
“For the first 10 years of my life, I lived just outside the nation’s capital, but we didn’t have running water or indoor plumbing,” she recalls.
Community groups helped her neighborhood remedy the situation, she says, and she retains a deep personal understanding that “folks really cannot think about what they need to do for wellness and prevention when they don’t even have access to basic things like water.”
Judy Belk, president, California Wellness Foundation
Education: Bachelor’s degree, Northwestern University; master’s degree in public administration, California State University in East Bay.
Career highlights: Senior vice president, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors; vice president of global public affairs, Levi Strauss & Company; director of public affairs, Association of Bay Area Governments.
Board service: Surdna Foundation and the Marlborough School, a private institution for girls in Los Angeles.
Salary: She declined to disclose it.
Hobbies: Writing personal essays that have appeared in national publications and other outlets.
