Chuck Feeney, the billionaire philanthropist who decided to give away his wealth during his lifetime in order to better humanity, died at the age of 92 on October 9, 2023. Victor describes the first time he met Chuck with Chris Oeschsli, President & CEO of Atlantic Philanthropies. The meeting took place at the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF which houses the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program.
Reflections on Chuck Feeney | Professor Victor Valcour, Director Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health, UCSF
Recorded in 2022
I’m Victor Valcour and I direct the UCSF side of GBHI. I think the first time we met Chuck was probably after we’d established the Program. We wanted, in some way, to share our excitement of what was happening with the Fellows. To share with him our gratitude, and also to give him a flavour of what we do.
We had a board meeting with the Atlantic Philanthropies at UCSF, and Governor Jerry Brown, at the time, stopped by, and Chuck was there. It was a big deal that the Governor was stopping by at UCSF. He was there for a precision medicine summit. The Governor came in and talked a lot about criminal justice reform in California, and the very proud moments that he had. Chuck was very quiet through the thing. So was Chris. We learned afterwards that a lot of the work in criminal justice reform in California had been funded by Chuck, and I’m not sure Jerry Brown knew that. I think it was all anonymous funding.
So, it was a pretty unusual experience that I think tells you a lot about who Chuck was. The humility of knowing that this was a major movement that had happened within the state. And people in politics were very proud of it and took credit for it in some ways, even in front of some of the funding sources for that change. The end game occurred and there’s no need to take credit for it, which is, I think what really resonates with me the most about my recollection of Chuck and, in some ways, how I lead the programs that we have. The Atlantic Philanthropies and Chuck’s gift to us has given me, personally, the opportunity to not worry about my name on things, not worry about fighting for the next grant. Because in my profession, you pay for your salary yourself all your life. We don’t have state dollars at UCSF. If you don’t bring in the grant dollars, you don’t have a salary. So, after 20, 25 years of doing that and always maintaining that somebody finally gave me the opportunity to do what we thought was right and not have to keep chasing that game. Not have to keep chasing the name and the title and being first author, last author, getting that next grant. No competition.
Suddenly, we were operating in a field, in a space where others weren’t telling us what we had to do. We weren’t responding to another person’s idea of what the solution might be. Which is really what you do a lot in grant writing: somebody’s asking you to write something around what they think is a solution. Suddenly, we had the opportunity to think, “What really is going to make a difference? What truly is going to make a difference for individuals?” And we can really think creatively, rather than within the box of, “This call for proposals is asking you to do this and this. So, I would say that that’s the legacy to me, a personal investment in me, as an individual, to be able to accompany our Fellows and really have meaningful change around the world.
I think there certainly is a sense of collaborative work across our Fellows, and I think across disciplines as well as across geographies. The information we’re providing to solutions is coming from a much broader group of individuals. And we’re not particularly listening to one solution, one way of doing things. I almost got the sense that the word “think tank” wasn’t liked, and I have to give some thought to why that might not be something that resonates with others. I think of our Fellowship, in some ways, as a think tank. I think of it as an opportunity for people from different disciplines, different geographies, different perspectives, to sit together and think about the challenges that they have in their communities and think about how others have solved similar problems in their communities, and see what works and what does not work, to be able to implement their own strategies in their community. I think that’s the collaborative nature that I see across our Program.
I think about what we’re doing, to what degree can it be attributed to one source of funding, one experience, one activity that we have done, and it’s a very difficult question to answer. When I look, at an individual level, at some of our Fellows – who I’m pretty certain would never have had the opportunities that they have – there’s no question. There’s no question that this gift has lifted up so many people that would not otherwise have had an opportunity. We’ve reflected on this even within the early cohorts - many of our early cohorts had a disproportionate number of women, and we’ve really thought about why’s that happening.
This year, it’s a bit more balanced, but we still have more women. Why might that happen? And one of the potential hypotheses we think about is that women, in many geographies, aren’t given opportunities, and that this is an opportunity. If we look at it with an equity lens and we think about, not only who looks like what we think should be a leader, but who, from where they began, has shown the greatest degree of capacity, capability. It’s a different lens than you might see in a typical academic PhD-type program, where you just look at the flat top. How many papers have you had? What degrees have you had? Whose letters of recommendations do you have? And so forth. We don’t do that. We think more specifically about, what resources did this individual have, and what did they accomplish with those resources?
We heard from our colleagues in South Africa how so much change has occurred, particularly among women, women in households, women making big changes and making things happen in the COVID pandemic. Not the leaders, not the people who’ve had these privileges all of their lives. I think we’re seeing that also in brain health, in the communities that we’re working in. We’re getting new solutions, solutions that weren’t brought to the table previously. And we’re getting incredibly powerful, capable individuals that otherwise might have been dismissed because they don’t have 10 publications or the degree in a certain place, or the letter of recommendation, or even, in some cases, a curriculum vitae that looks like what we’re expecting to see. If you’ve never been mentored to make a CV, how can you expect to be judged based on what your CV looks like? It’s a bizarre concept.
I think our strategy to focus on regions was a wise one, and the Latin American strategy, in particular, leveraged some relationships we had prior to the conversations we had with Chris and the Board. We knew there were strong connections with individuals, mostly through the work of my boss, Bruce Miller. We had a network of trust across those communities. And right out the gate, we got some of the best trainees that they had in their programs. And that was a transformative opportunity, because if you start strong, it’s so much easier to continue to go, and I think it was really based on those relationships.
I also think that, by focusing on a region, we weren’t taking on a massive amount of networking, I guess, or in some ways, the cultural variability was a little bit less. There were some commonalities. So, it allowed us to achieve change, I think, a little bit easier, rather than trying to focus on the entire world right out the gate. Those individuals, as they came in, developed a bond with each other in a very strong way, and they still work together today. They have large grants together, they have networked together, they have WhatsApp groups together. Within our group of GBHI, the affinity group for cognitive assessments across diverse population include people from Botswana, from Brazil, from the US, from many, many geographies. And they are working together, and they are doing things, and they are running projects. The next step is across program, and I think that’s going to happen as well, and it’s going to take intentional effort. I think the creatives will be the early adapters. The doctors, the neuroscientists, the more introverted among us are probably not going to be the early adapters to those, but we’ll get there as well.
Right now, an Atlantic Fellow is somebody who’s working in underrepresented populations, working in some of the most difficult places in the world, addressing largely prevention - not only primary prevention, which is trying to prevent the disease, but even secondary and tertiary prevention, which is trying to alleviate suffering when people have an early diagnosis, or they have early indications they’re going to develop diagnosis, to try to slow the progression. All of those are really critical to who we are, as Atlantic Fellows. We work in all aspects of it, even down to palliative care for people with dementia.
So, within our experience, the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health, that’s the lens. It’s largely in this very public-facing space, community-facing space. Not entirely. Fellows are working in other aspects that are still within, largely, this primary, secondary, tertiary prevention space. But there’s always an aspect – and it’s built into our application – of, what is it about this individual that has been based in an equity lens? Whether it is the individual themselves, the community they’re working in, that they’re serving, or perhaps it is that they’re addressing a problem that’s been ignored, largely because it’s not in vogue, or a population that hasn’t ever had an opportunity to be understood in the right way. Or that they’re trying to advocate for underrepresented voices in the conversations. Those are the folks that are Atlantic Fellows.
It’s early years yet, and this is a huge disease. You can definitely see examples of what’s changing in terms of hope, advocacy, even prevention. More of an approach on primary prevention. An example. Eléonore Bayen’s work on a film for children, saying, “What are the eight best ways that you, as an eight-year-old to a twelve-year-old, can protect your brain for when you’re older?” Those types of things, I think, on an individual level, are really clearly happening. Can I completely attribute it? Well, certainly we gave a rehabilitation neurologist an opportunity to think outside of the box. She met somebody who does film. We thought she would do something perhaps around traumatic brain injury, but no, she’s developed a movie that’s being used across France and has been translated into Spanish, English, French, and I think even Portuguese. So those things have happened at an individual level. Hard to look at the global level. We’re early years still.
I think there’s a lot more dialogue and hope. I believe there’s a lot more collaborative nature, so we are not as siloed as perhaps we would be without this type of support. And I think we’ve probably changed the narrative for other folks, that you can’t just stay in your silo. That you’ll come up with better solutions if you become more cross-disciplinary in your approach.
So, here we are, seven years in. We’re bringing our next cohort in, and over 200 Fellows, and we have really focused on Latin America. So, where do we go at this point? We need to fortify that network. It’s fragile. It’s a fragile network that we have lots of opportunities, largely through funding sources, to try to fortify that network. Then we need to pivot to another region of the world. And based on our relationship with other Atlantic Fellows Programs, based on who has already applied and been accepted to our Program, we’re most likely moving to a geography in Africa. And I won’t say Africa, because that’s a huge region, but in Africa, I think we will find our next area where we can start developing those relationships, networking, and try to build something. Particularly, I’m interested in South Africa, although the number of Fellows we’ve had from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe are not large. East Africa is starting to coalesce a little bit. We have a little bit of strength in Nigeria. And in the Mediterranean, North Africa countries, we have another opportunity. So, that’s where I think we’ll spend some time in the next five years.
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