What One Man Can Do

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The host explained that, over a period of more than 30 years in an inner city Pittsburgh neighborhood, Strickland had built his nonprofit arts and technology organization into a model for the empowerment of poor people. She noted that Strickland had served by White House appointment on the National Council on the Arts and sat on the board of directors of several institutions, including Mellon Bank and his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh. The host observed that Strickland was almost certainly the only individual to have been both the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and a guest on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In 1996, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Strickland one of its genius grants.

Skoll watched this big dude with his funky slides take the stage and start talking about Frank Lloyd Wright, fountains, and welfare moms preparing salmon almondine. He showed pictures of poor people learning organic chemistry to become pharmacy techs for Bayer, and neighborhood kids at computer monitors learning digital imaging. He told stories about the late Sen. John Heinz handing him a check for a million dollars to train food-industry workers. He showed a photo of the greenhouse he'd built to train students in horticulture and -- to make the greeenhouse self-supporting -- to grow orchids to supply a local supermarket chain.

Then he started talking about jazz, how he'd built a Field of Dreams-like 350-seat concert hall in the same building as the arts and job-training center. And sure enough the musicians had come -- Dizzy Gillespie and Pat Metheny and Wynton Marsalis and many others -- to perform and record at Manchester Bidwell. See, that's a shot of Dizzy right there.

Near the end of his presentation, Strickland told a story about meeting Mayor Willie Brown in San Francisco. It seemed that Brown heard Strickland talk and told him that he, Mayor Brown, wanted one of those centers in his city. So Strickland, Brown, and Herbie Hancock -- dig it, Herbie Hancock -- sat down over dinner and, on a place mat, drew out the plans for a center in Hunters Point, a San Francisco neighborhood similar to Manchester. And here it was: Strickland showed a slide, an artist's rendering of the Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology (popularly known by the acronym BAYCAT), the Bay Bridge arching in the background, trees, fountain, plaza....

"Now, just a little bit ago I was showing this drawing to a group of schoolkids up in San Francisco," Strickland told the Silicon Valley audience. "And this girl raised her hand and said, 'Mr. Strickland, this looks wonderful. How long will it take you-all to build it?'

"And I told her, 'Well, honey, something like this is an awfully big job. Maybe, if we're lucky, three or four years.'

"And that girl looked up at me and said, 'Mr. Strickland, I don't have three or four years."

The girl was right, she doesn't have three or four years. Neither does this country. Kids dropping out of high school at a 50% rate or worse because their schools look and act like prisons, not places where dreams take root. Poverty growing, neighborhoods dying -- hope dying. Jobs are out there -- you all know what I'm talking about -- but you can't fill them and people who want to work can't find them because they can't read, can't do basic math, and what's worse they can't imagine themselves reading or doing the math, much less working those good jobs to support their families. Something wrong with this picture, my friends. Something way wrong. I found Frank Ross. Millions of kids looking for their own Frank Ross. Millions of adults wanting to be Frank Ross. But they can't find each other. They can't find a place to go that treats them fairly and offers them good food to eat and beautiful things to look at and good work to do. That little girl is right, my friends -- we are going down. We don't have three or four years. But we got each other. We got our hearts and our brains and our hands, and if we work together we can do it, we can change the world. We can build this center for that little girl, ladies and gentlemen.

Then Strickland signed off and all the Silicon Valley princes leaped to their feet, clapping and hollering, as if they were up at PacBell Park and Barry Bonds had just hit one into McCovey Cove. Tears glistened in more than one executive's eyes. Jeff Skoll's first thought was, "Oh, no, I've got to go on after this guy," followed by the realization that this man from Pittsburgh was his foundation's premise made flesh. This was the brand, Skoll thought.

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