I feel the constant tears today, freezing on my face but not resisting at all. I even cried (embarrassed) when I interviewed the young woman from New Jersey who has applied for entry to Yale. I just can't help it today.

The last two years have been tough ones for...

TV history was made last night: The stunning Jodie Foster, twice Oscar winner and tonight's winner of the Cecil B. DeMille award for lifetime achievement, thanked her ex-partner Cydney Bernard, with whom she has two boys. While saying that she did her "coming out in the Stone Age,"...

Watching the sun as it set on the Waikiki skyline at the close of the last day of 2012, I recalled that it was a bumpy year for many, what with unemployment, low pay, high gas prices, shooting deaths, broken marriages, the fiscal cliff, floods, storms and more. On the...

The Crown Princess of Norway Mette-Marit has made an extraordinary trip to India, posing as a nanny to care for twins newly born through a surrogate for her two married gay male friends and Norwegian countrymen. This is a complicated story with a lot of heart. The tale involves helpless...

When Presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued that defunding the Federal Emergency Relief program FEMA was necessary he set in motion his likely defeat on November 6th, 2012. He built upon this narrative with his characterization of 47% of Americans as leeches and self-dealing victims on society....

Tonight Romney seemed to be playing Battleship; Obama chess. While postured as the Foreign Policy Debate -- Romney certainly drove home his local economic agenda, perhaps avoiding his apparent weakness on foreign policy. He reiterated the millions on food stamps.

Battleship is a guessing game for two players, and time...

When pundits were condemning President Obama's first debate performance I saw "groupthink" in action. Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people, in which the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. I found almost no commentators willing to look at...

Obama's gambit -- his turn again on Tuesday.

My father taught me chess -- and the way he always won was by his opening gambit. Perhaps that is why I see through President Obama's debate gambit. In chess, a gambit is when a player sacrifices material with the hope of...

I was in Charlotte, North Carolina on Saturday for two friends' wedding. Weddings are those wonderful opportunities to see friends in the context of their families, local community and colleagues. You come together in a cross generational event that reminds you that you and they are part of a particular...

I was just asked to participate in an event at the Ford Foundation. It is a fascinating collaboration with The BRITDOC Foundation and The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program called the Good Pitch. I will be engaging film director Yoruba Richen on her documentary, The New Black. The documentary uncovers...

I traveled down the Amazon River over the 2011 Christmas and New Year holidays with civil rights icon Julian Bond and his brilliant wife Pamela Horowitz. I had gotten to know Julian and Pam, from years of traveling with them trying to raise money to secure the financial future of...

Recently, a friend posted on facebook a Clay Bennett cartoon that captured the puzzling religious nature of the Republican platform -- at least as it has been developing in the 2012 primaries. In the cartoon a woman is strapped to the "USA bed" and a priest seems to...

Can a former Board Member of a local Planned Parenthood defend the Susan G. Komen Foundation?

Of course I can, and I will.

Komen is an extraordinary entrepreneurial foundation that has used many of the tools of business to secure its place as the "the global leader of the...

2012 is almost upon us, and I am optimistic and fired up for the New Year. In 2011 we celebrated the Centennial of Andrew Carnegie giving back all his wealth to society when there was no tax incentive to do so, and the disgrace of Steve Jobs' apparent choice to...

Thanksgiving Day was also my birthday this year. Like many of my philanthropic friends, I want to give back to this society that has done so much for me and for those in need, especially at this time of increasing inequality. This weekend I shuttled between friends and family surviving...

Are supersized philanthropists diminishing our democracy? What bothers the right about "big government" should bother us about "supersized philanthropy." The growing power of philanthropists has begun to undercut our democracy and our democratic institutions.

Famed supersized philanthropist Bill Gates is speaking to the G20 countries in Cannes in favor...