After 20 years of supporting her family by training and racing horses, Pat Smith was stricken with spinal meningitis. She lay in a coma for ten days, and when she was well enough to go home, she found that her business had been liquidated by her husband. They divorced and Pat started working to rebuild her life.

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CFED President Andrea Levere Selected as Yale School of Management Donaldson Fellow in Inaugural 2008-2009 Class

CFED President Andrea Levere has been selected as a Donaldson Fellow at the Yale School of Management.  Ms. Levere joins four other prestigious honorees for this inaugural Class of 2008-2009.

The Donaldson Fellowship is awarded to graduates of the Yale School of Management and selected by a committee of alumni, students, faculty and staff from a pool of nominees. These individuals participated in a symposium at the school this month. The Donaldson Fellows Program, named for the school's founding dean William Donaldson, was established to recognize and honor Yale SOM alumni who exemplify the school's mission of educating leaders for business and society.

At the symposium, Levere framed out the five ways schools can help the asset-building field:

• Help us bring more talented people into this field—either working directly or supporting us as partners, Board members, and advisors—a request completely aligned with the vision of educating for business and society
  
• Help us invent new forms of investment tools for nonprofit organizations that leverage the techniques of investment bankers and venture capitalists to provide the growth capital that builds the balance sheet that is so necessary for financial strength, innovation and sustainability
  
• Help us design the new management systems that combine business and mission, create the type of rewards that will keep my brilliant staff who have so many options, and foster the culture of collaboration that is so essential to results
  
• Help us identify and structure partnerships across sectors that leverage capacity and resources in new ways that reach levels of scale and impact impossible by acting alone
  
• Help us evaluate and build knowledge about what we are doing in ways that improve practice, offers lessons for policy design and development, and allow us to remain competitive in most dynamic of economic environments

View Levere’s full remarks (pdf, 108kb)