Giving Back
Deborah Smeltzer
This is my story about the journey I am currently taking to find ways to share with my local community the skills and expertise I have acquired during my life.
As a young person growing up in a middle-class household, I was fortunate to have a family who highly valued education and community. My youth was rich in both formal and informal educational experiences that included not only strong academics and music but also learning about nature, agriculture, and communities far from our home in suburban Southern California. Every summer, our parents took our family of five children on camping trips, exploring the many western state parks and especially the wonderful National Parks. Every five years we traveled to the family homestead in North Dakota for a multi-generational family reunion not far from the Canadian border. There we met second and third cousins and learned about rural life on a mid-western wheat farm.
My love of science focused my time at university on biology and dreams of a career in medicine. A junior year abroad in Bordeaux, France helped me appreciate that there are many more world perspectives than what we have in the U.S. Post-graduate studies in microbiology led me to the world of medical research. Two years at Stanford School of Business honed my financial and organizational skills. My husband’s move to serve in Washington, D.C. led me to a career in finance, first investment banking and then venture capital. When an opportunity arose to join the executive team of an emerging French biotechnology company, I jumped through the open door and landed for four years in Paris. My role as CFO and public spokesperson for a high-profile genomics company in the late 90’s was a heady time of globe-trotting, meeting fund managers, telling our story, and raising capital. Returning to the Bay Area in 2000, having been recruited to be a senior executive of an international public company, I experienced the challenges of a business driven by shareholder expectations and managing a significant workforce. Long hours and incessant travel became the norm. A wake-up call brought home to me that my family life was being neglected. I joined a smaller public biotechnology company where I could have more control over my life and get back to the basics of growing an organization.
During all these career-focused years, I tried to spend as much time with my family as possible. However, I did not make much time for community involvement. Perhaps not having children to tie me to local community activities made it too easy to put off such engagement. When I retired from my career in 2009, we moved to the Pacific Northwest, to an area I still consider to be “paradise.” My early focus was to spend time with my husband traveling to places we’d dreamed of visiting but had never taken the time to make it happen. I also made a vow to myself that I would find ways to give back to my community.
Together, my husband and I committed four years to mentoring local fourth-grade students with their science fair projects. This turned into a much more intense effort than we originally conceived. In our Washington state schools, fourth grade is the first year a science project is required, and it is designated as a “home”, not classroom assignment. Many of our students were not getting the help they needed at home, so with the teachers we designed a system of one-on-one mentoring to assist these 9-10-year-olds with understanding how to do a science project, culminating in their presentation to their classmates and then the public at the annual science fair. Since nearly half the students in our local school came from tribal families, we had the additional challenge of teaching scientific method to those whose culture was quite different. We were pleased to have achieved 100% participation by students during the years of our involvement, a remarkable improvement over prior years. Alas, my husband’s asthma status prevented us from continuing when the risks to his health increased with the exposure to youth during cold and flu season.
Meanwhile, I had become involved in two other community activities. I became certified as a Master Gardener under the statewide program coordinated by Washington State University. I also became an active volunteer with our community orchestra, focused primarily on the education program. Both of these efforts appealed to me because of their focus on community outreach and education and the opportunity to share my skills and expertise in a way that could benefit others. Today, my husband often teases me that I spend as much time and energy as a volunteer as I did as a corporate executive. Together we have also become significant patrons, in both time and funds, to support the arts, education at the university level, and our county land trust.
When I reflect back on my life to date and what has provided the most meaning to me, I can honestly say that I am most grateful for this past decade of community involvement. I have learned so much from the students, schoolteachers, home gardeners, musicians, and community members with whom I interact weekly. The satisfaction and rewards of building education programs and sharing them with both friends and strangers is immense. I am humbled by how much I still have to learn and extremely satisfied when my organizational skills can so readily be put to use. Through my work with not-for-profit organizations, I have gained enormous respect for the challenges they face and the talented people that are key to ensuring their success. In these trying times, such organizations are critically important to help us keep our humanity front and center. Although very comfortable in our retirement in “paradise”, I am thankful that my husband and I are in a position to share our wealth in ways that can make a difference locally and seed the next generation of creativity. I had an extraordinary and fulfilling career. That said, I am incredibly happy to be focused now on giving back.