A Tribute to Thomas J. White, Co-Founder of Partners in Health

Yesterday, Thomas J. White, a co-founder of the amazing organization, Partners in Health, and a very successful businessman in Boston in the construction industry, whose childhood was very painful, died at age 90.

Today's Boston Globe has a very moving tribute about this great man, entitled: "Rich beyond counting with compassion for the poor."

According to the article:

He lived his life with but a single regret.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more money to give away,’’ he told the Globe in 2004.

What he handed out had a ripple effect beyond the immediate lives he saved, said Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College who was at the inception of Partners in Health with Mr. White, Dr. Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Todd McCormack.

(Dr. Kim has an undergrad degree from my alma mater, Brown University, and an MD and PhD from Harvard.)

“After a while, we tried to limit his trips to Haiti, because it pained him so much,’’ Kim said. “No matter where he was, every morning he would wake up and start his day thinking about the suffering of the poor. I have never, ever seen a person like that before, where the reality of the pain of others was with him all the time.’’

He even delivered personally to a homeless woman in Harvard Square a red wagon a day after she told him that a red wagon was what she really needed to cart her belongings around.

As we approach the one year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, it is time to reflect. Dr. Kim's mother called Mr. Thomas J. White, a living saint.

I leave you with some words of wisdom from this exemplary philanthropist, businessman, and human being, courtesy of Partners in Health:

I think it’s important for us to live in an inclusive world. Excluding people for this reason or that is, in most cases, grossly unfair. I also think that the myth of the self-made man is exactly that, a myth. All of us are born under many conditions over which we had no control or no vote, i.e. where and when we were born, whether we were male or female, the color of our skin, our ethnicity, and our religion.

The Pooling of Resources for Humanitarian Operations

The New York Times has a very interesting, provocative article on the pooling of resources for humanitarian operations and, in particular, as applied to Haiti, but the topic is broader and relevant in other disaster and humanitarian relief contexts. The article is focused on the pooling of financial resources and notes that the Red Cross, although it did not have a large presence in Haiti prior to the earthquake, because of its brand name recognition, has received many more financial donations than has Partners in Health, which has had a large presence in Haiti, even before the earthquake struck on January 12, 2010.

The issue of financial donations to relief organizations and providing stakeholders with proper accounting of donations is an important one and two of my former doctoral students, who are now professors, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger and Dr. Fuminori Toyasaki, are actively researching this topic.

I would argue that cooperation among humanitarian organizations in relief operations is critical and I have written on this topic earlier in this blog. In particular, as was evident in Haiti, there were numerous demand points (and there still are) for such products as water, food, medicines, and tents and the networks of different organizations were not working together in a synergistic manner. Some of the issues were obviously ones of lack of communication and coordination. Nevertheless, when it comes to the pooling of resources, including financial ones, by being able to represent the various activities of the humanitarian organizations as networks, one can actually quantify the synergistic gains from cooperation.

In joint work with Dr. Trisha Woolley and Dr. Patrick Qiang, we have developed a synergy measure that can be used to assess the benefits of cooperation by sharing of network resources. The work is documented in a study entitled, "Multiproduct Supply Chain Horizontal Network Integration: Models, Theory, and Computational Results," which is in press in the journal International Transactions in Operational Research. I presented this work earlier at the humanitarian logistics conference that I had organized, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation, that took place at its Bellagio Center.

University Leadership -- Diversity at the Top and Dartmouth

Dr. Jim Yong Kim has assumed the presidency of Dartmouth College and is bringing fresh ideas and a new energy to that Ivy League Institution. Dr. Kim graduated from Brown University, my alma mater, in 1982, and received a PhD and medical degree from Harvard University. He is a medical anthropologist, and the co-founder of Partners in Health, which supports health programs in poor countries. He left his position at Harvard for the Dartmouth presidency, something that has amazed many students. Dr. Kim was one of the subjects in Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains.

The article, Boston.com, in today's Boston Globe, captures beautifully the excitement surrounding Dr. Kim's presidency. Interestingly, Dr. Kim was born in South Korea, was on his high school's football team in Iowa and on Brown's volleyball team.

Students at Dartmouth are clamoring to meet him. He already has played golf with students at 5:30AM and a thousand students have lined up to shake his hand. He has handled delicate situations with great diplomacy, kindness, and skill. In giving advice to students on leadership he has said, People think leadership is standing up and giving orders but a big chunk of leadership is learning to be a follower, to have an understanding of what it's like to be of service to someone else. After one of his talks, students clamored to further talk to him and, come midnight, his aide was clearly exhausted. Dr. Kim's statement, I'm hanging out until all students are gone.

I was reminded of the Graduate Ceremonies last May, in which the Chancellor of UMass Amherst, Dr. Robert Holub, shook the hand of each and every degree recipient (which obviously took amazing stamina and even courage due to the swine flu concerns).

Leadership at the top matters and great leadership can make a tremendous difference in the lives of many. We wish the new leaders of universities and other complex organizations much success.