Be Fearless

by Jean Case

  Mom and Dad had moved the family to Normal from Chicago, thinking that this smaller community would be a better environment for raising kids. And while things were good in those early years, as we grew Mom became increasingly concerned that the town offered limited paths of opportunity. She had big dreams for her children and worried we’d get stuck if we stayed.

  At about the same time Mom was beginning to worry about our future, my first life-altering experience took place: my parents divorced. That left Mom a single mother of four working as a waitress at night to make ends meet. Those were times of struggle, but fortunately, my mother’s parents were there to help.

  My grandparents had come to America from Germany on the eve of the Great Depression. Not speaking English, they’d set out to find whatever work they could. For my grandfather, this meant hauling pianos to upstairs apartments in buildings without elevators. My grandmother made beer in her bathtub to sell to the other German immigrants in the neighborhood. (These were Prohibition years.) As their English improved, so did their prospects for work. Within their first decade in America they became small-business owners, beginning with a curtain cleaning business in Chicago before they eventually settled in Normal’s twin city, Bloomington, where they bought and ran a hotel near Main Street.

  It was in that hotel that I got my first sense of business life. Mom’s night shift as a waitress left her days free, so she’d routinely bundle us up and we’d head to the hotel to help in whatever way we could. My brothers shoveled coal into the furnace, and my sister and I ran errands or did chores. I felt like I was the luckiest kid alive when I got to sit behind the large reception desk and pretend I was in charge. There was a large glass case with candy and some essentials, and my grandmother noticed that guests were much more inclined to buy something if I was behind the counter. She figured everyone was trying to be nice to “the kid,” so she encouraged me to greet guests or hang out next to her as she worked behind the counter.

  My grandparents’ fearless American journey and their tireless work ethic provided an early lesson for me that one could start out without many resources, connections, or skills—including language—and build lives of consequence. In addition to their contribution to our lives, they were civic leaders in our town and were widely respected for their many contributions.

  But more and more my mother came to believe that in order to thrive, we would have to leave the cocoon of Normal behind. So, with few resources and four children to care for, she decided to take a leap into the great unknown. I remember the day she announced that we were moving a thousand miles away to Fort Lauderdale. I was eleven and I listened doubtfully as she described how much we were going to love it there. We didn’t know a single person in the area. But Mom had an infectious optimism and somehow she made our move feel like a grand adventure. Which, in the end, it turned out to be.

  I had attended public school in Normal, but on the day we drove to the Pompano Beach middle school where I was to be registered, I couldn’t help but gape at the plywood covering the windows, the graffiti spray-painted on the walls, and the police officers who patrolled the hallways. Florida’s lack of a state income tax meant that schools were woefully underfunded. Mom and I walked only a few steps down the hall before I felt my arm being jerked. “Let’s go,” she said, pulling me back toward the entrance. “You deserve better than this.”

  After that, Mom was on a tear. We visited a local Catholic school but didn’t feel so welcome, maybe because Mom was a divorced mother of four. After visits to other area private schools, we received news that, thanks to the great education I had received in Illinois, I was testing ahead of my grade level and had been offered a scholarship to a new school being started by the local Presbyterian church. Because it was a start-up, with no legacy to protect, it could take risks on a kid like me. I couldn’t have imagined how that school would become the ticket to a great education that my mother never could have afforded, all thanks to the generosity of others.

  At my new school, I was inspired and nurtured. I still remember my twenty-one-year-old sixth-grade teacher, Miss Neal, who made up excuses to run errands with me after class, which I later realized was her way of caring for a latchkey kid who was new to town. To this day she remains a very dear friend.

  In the early years after we moved to the Fort Lauderdale area, I spent summers back in Illinois with my grandparents, growing closer to them with each passing year. When my grandmother died, I felt a huge loss, as did the rest of the family, but our spirits were lifted when my grandfather decided to buy a home and move just a few doors down from us. On my sixteenth birthday, I chose to move in with him on my own, and that experience led to a whole new education. Every day we had coffee together before school, and after school we’d talk about my day. Often we’d wander down the street to a canal where we’d go fishing together. I cherished my time with my grandfather, and he also instilled a self-discipline in me that I am grateful for to this day, including his habit of pounding on my bedroom door if I wasn’t up by 7:00 a.m.—even on weekends or unscheduled summer days. With his deep voice and German accent, he’d loudly cry out through the door, “It’s seven a.m.! Are you going to sleep all day?” I’ve often thought what he was really trying to convey was this: “It’s a new day. There’s much to be done. Don’t waste it.” And thanks to him, that is the spirit I’ve tried to carry through my life.

  I had dreams of becoming a lawyer, and in high school I was lucky to land an internship with Judge E. Clay Shaw Jr., who would soon become mayor and then a member of Congress. Most of the work was administrative—filing, typing, and the like. But those afternoons in Judge Shaw’s law office were my first exposure to a truly professional environment: people wore suits and spoke in a language and conducted themselves in a manner I’d not been previously exposed to. At the close of each week, Judge Shaw would call me into his office and sit me down on one of the two chairs flanking the fireplace (a rare sight in southern Florida) and query me: What was I working on? What had I learned that week? How were my grades? Was I staying on the straight and narrow? He was mentoring me, and each Friday, as I walked out of his office, I made a vow to never disappoint him.

  During my college years, I volunteered on Shaw’s campaign for Congress. After he was elected in 1980, I joined his team as a staff assistant while attending college classes at night. Thanks to this experience, I secured a job as a young political appointee in the Reagan administration when I moved to Washington. My oldest brother made the thousand-mile trip with me, lending me his Sears credit card once we’d arrived so I could splurge on an iron and ironing board. To this day, I speak to him nearly every morning. Mom didn’t just raise a family; we were a tribe, always looking out for each other.

  My career seemed to be on a positive trajectory, and it wasn’t long before I found my way to the private sector. Those were the earliest days of the Internet, and the start-up that hired me was the nation’s first pure play online service. I felt exhilarated working to democratize access to ideas, information, and communication—empowering people. When I was young, Mom had spent the better part of two years making monthly payments so I could have an encyclopedia set at home. Now all the knowledge contained in those vast volumes was accessible with the click of a button. It thrilled me to think that my role in the private sector could do more to benefit others than I might have achieved working in the public sector.

  Before long I took a similar position at General Electric; and then, in my late twenties, I joined another young start-up that was to become America Online (AOL), where I’d spend nearly a decade as AOL helped usher in the Internet revolution. The name we chose for the service reflected our big idea: getting America online. At its peak, AOL carried 50 percent of the nation’s Internet traffic. It was a richly rewarding experience. I felt incredibly lucky to be a part of one of the greatest periods of innovation the United States had seen.

  It was during those AOL years that I added another significant and cherished role—I
became a mom. My two daughters changed forever the way I see the world. Later, it was a blessing to expand to a blended family that added three more kids to the mix! I quickly realized that the role of working mom would require its own sense of fearlessness in the raising of children. What I couldn’t have known then was just how much I would learn from them and what a source of inspiration they would be in my life.

  As I had built my career and applied my skills to this point, it was always with a focus on empowering others. Yes, I had achieved more than I had hoped, but I was still restless, wanting to make an even bigger impact. So in 1997, I left AOL, and Steve and I cofounded the Case Foundation. I became the CEO. We made the commitment to give away the bulk of our wealth to benefit others, and for me it was an experience of coming full circle. As a former beneficiary of philanthropy, which had launched me into a world of opportunity, now I could help to lift others.

  For me, the Case Foundation wasn’t just about sharing the wealth. Family foundations are often the coda of a life successfully lived, a way to distribute money to worthy causes. But our vision for the Case Foundation was that it be a vibrant laboratory for change. It was the most ambitious quest of my life, and I could see how everything I’d done before helped to prepare me for the challenge.

  I knew that becoming CEO of the Case Foundation was the first step of the most challenging endeavor of my life—one that required me to embrace a fearless mind-set, and that’s what I’ve tried to do in the years since. More recently, after more than a decade of working on various boards at the National Geographic Society, I was privileged to be named the first female Chairman of the Board of Trustees. I have long loved this organization, which has been transforming people’s lives for 130 years through the power of science, exploration, and storytelling. The fearless men and women of National Geographic have boldly gone to the front lines of the unknown, often at tremendous risk, and have shared their knowledge and experiences with the rest of us. And since adventures into the unknown require resources and a platform, the National Geographic Society makes that happen. Being a part of this remarkable organization, I felt my personal fearless quotient rising, and was happy to adopt Explorer-at-Large Jane Goodall’s motto: “Every individual can make a difference every day.” In fact, if you look closely at the National Geographic Society, you will see the five principles of Be Fearless at work every day across the organization and around the world.

  Whether at the Case Foundation, at the National Geographic Society, or with any of the other initiatives and causes close to my heart, I am constantly reminded of my first and most enduring fearless role model. Mom passed away about a decade ago, but her generous nature and fierce determination continue to inspire me. She’s the person who taught me to take risks, to see possibility, and to be good to others. She didn’t use lofty words like “philanthropy,” but she had an impact on everyone she touched. In this book, I talk about making a Big Bet. I realize that I was my mom’s Big Bet; she devoted her life to helping me discover how to find purpose and success. From her, I learned that all of us can do great things, but sometimes it requires leaving the cocoon of Normal.

  PART ONE

  MAKE A BIG BET

  * * *

  Start right where you are

  Be audacious

  Burst through assumptions

  Peek around corners

  Now go, make your Big Bet

  ONE

  START RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

  On an afternoon in 2005, I sat in the waiting room of Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen’s counseling office, fidgeting as the minutes ticked by. I had arrived early for my meeting with Barbara, a friend and family counselor with a kind heart and a reputation for excellence. My curiosity had been piqued when I’d seen her days earlier at an event and she’d asked if I might be willing to meet. “I have an idea,” she’d said, “and I’d love to run it by you and see what you think.” So there I sat, wondering what she might want to discuss.

  Soon the door opened and Barbara warmly welcomed me into her office. “I have a problem,” she started off. “And others in my profession are seeing the same thing.” Week after week, she was getting calls for counseling services from men and women in the military and their families. With the war on terror raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 200,000 service personnel had been called to active duty, with many serving multiple tours. Barbara described to me the traumatic reality of life in such places. That trauma followed the soldiers home; there was a growing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) crisis. And the stress of multiple tours of duty had taken a real toll on many military families. Unfortunately, she told me, the Department of Veterans Affairs was overwhelmed by the scope of the problem. It couldn’t keep up with the demand for mental health services, leaving too many soldiers and their families without the resources they needed.

  She told me that she’d personally taken on a few families pro bono and had convinced other colleagues to do the same. Giving just an hour a week of pro bono therapy wasn’t too much of a hardship on any one doctor, and most of the doctors she’d talked to were happy to do their small part to help those on the front lines.

  “So here’s my idea,” Barbara said. “I want to create a nationwide network of doctors and other caregivers who would agree to give an hour a week. If we can get enough of them to commit, we can help close the gap in mental health services for military families.”

  I sat absorbing what she was proposing before peppering her with questions about how she might go about setting up this national network, what kind of support she would need, and what kind of time frame was feasible. Finally, I asked the hardest question: Why did she, as a sole practitioner with no experience in organization building, think she could pull this off?

  “Because the need is urgent, families are suffering, and I’m passionate about bringing a solution,” she replied without hesitation.

  Barbara’s Big Bet was that she would be able to create a large enough network of doctors and caregivers—along with military, political, and private sector leaders—to be of assistance, and that her hook—“Give an Hour”—would appeal to people who wanted to make a difference but had limited time. I believed in Barbara’s vision, and I left her office excited to be of help as she took the idea forward. It wasn’t long before Give an Hour was born.

  In the years since I sat in Barbara’s office, thousands of providers across the country have answered her call. Nearly a quarter of a million hours have been donated by her network of licensed care providers, the equivalent of almost $25 million in counseling services—all free. In 2012, Time magazine named Barbara among the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and her organization has been given four stars, the highest ranking, by Charity Navigator, the nation’s largest evaluator of charities, exceeding industry standards.

  And Barbara hasn’t stopped there. She has become a recognized leader in mental health, spearheading efforts to reduce the stigma and engaging high-profile entertainers to help carry her message and build an even broader movement. A documentary featuring her work aired on PBS in late 2017.

  Barbara’s story is a remarkable testament to what one individual can do to change the world. With no background in organization building, with no staff to support her, and without the funds and the network she knew she’d need, she made a Big Bet and took it one step at a time. In starting right where she was—one counselor giving an hour a week—she showed others that they could do the same. She asked only for the smallest commitment, and the enthusiastic response was a tribute to the soundness of her plan.

  The challenge to start right where you are is the great equalizer. For the most part, the public doesn’t hear about Big Bets until their results are out in the world, proven and successful. But if we could peek back to the beginning, we’d often find ourselves amazed by the simplicity of their origins. This should be inspiring for those of us who want to make a difference but feel thwarted by a lack of experience or resources.

  This applies to innov
ation and invention as well. In America, we think of an innovator as that lone guy tinkering in a garage who has an “aha!” moment. And while that might make for good storytelling, the truth is that it’s very seldom how breakthroughs come to be. Time and time again, they come from people living with real frustrations, who get to a point where they realize, “There has to be a better way.” So they set out to create one. Take, for instance, “newfangled” ideas like dishwashers, home security devices, and windshield wipers—none invented by lone guys in garages. In fact, all were invented by women.

  A striking example of this dynamic came more than one hundred years ago when an extraordinarily successful female entrepreneur built an enterprise, also based on a problem that needed solving. That woman was Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of slaves, who had the courage and initiative to launch her entrepreneurial dream and make a difference in spite of the extreme hardship of her life. The story of her Big Bet is so compelling that in 2018 LeBron James’s production company announced plans to create a limited series about her, starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer.

  We can only imagine the level of challenge Walker experienced in her early years. She was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, just after the Civil War, on a plantation in Louisiana, where her parents and all of her siblings had been slaves. Although she was free, her early life was marked by tragedy and struggle. She lost both parents by the age of seven and was sent to live with her sister and her husband in Mississippi, who hired her out as domestic help when she was only ten. At fourteen she married in order to flee their abusive home. By age seventeen she was a mother, and she was widowed at twenty. She worked as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week, and there was little indication that her life would take such a dramatic turn. She did not live in a climate like today’s where entrepreneurial dreams can often come true. Opportunity seemed out of reach for a poor woman with no resources. But as she would later say, “I got my start by giving myself a start.”