photo © Gerald Peart
“You need someone to have your back, and you need to guard the back of others.”
—ALICE DEAR, former ambassador to the African Development Bank
I met Alice Dear in the summer of 2013 when I was serving as the board chair at Women’s eNews. Its founder and executive director, Rita Henley Jensen, was hoping to add a board member with experience in the international business world. Due to Alice’s success as an international business consultant, we felt she would be an ideal addition. The three of us met for lunch in the Woolworth Building, directly across from Women’s eNews headquarters in downtown Manhattan.
Rita and I were already seated at a table in the back corner of the restaurant when Alice walked in dressed in bold African prints, reflecting years spent as a businesswoman in Africa. When we first tried to recruit her, she’d seemed somewhat taken aback, responding that she already had a full plate, particularly since she was in the midst of writing her memoir. We asked her again, toward the end of our lunch. “Your expertise in the global community is crucial to the expansion of our content abroad,” I added. She then agreed to join us, since her international work was so close to her heart.
As I came to know Alice over the next few months, I better understood that joining the board had to do with living her values. “You need someone to have your back, and you need to guard the back of others. That’s what women do,” she once told me.
Alice’s expertise in the international business world spanned more than thirty years, including eleven years on Wall Street as an international lending officer, and as an appointee by President Bill Clinton in 1994 serving as the US executive director of the African Development Bank. For the six years she held this position (1994–2000), she represented the US Government on the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank, headquartered in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. She later served as vice president of the African Millennium Fund LLC, an overseas private investment corporation-sponsored private equity fund where she designed the Women and Small Business Initiative.
When I resigned as Women’s eNews board chair at the end of 2013, the organization was preparing for a transition in leadership in anticipation of the founder’s retirement. Alice was the only board member willing to take over as chair. It was not the case that more time had opened up in her schedule. Once again, she “had our back,” making the needs of the organization a priority, even above her own.
It wasn’t until three years later, in February 2016, that I ran into Alice again, at the Global Summit of Women Gala in Washington, DC, where she was serving on its Advisory Council. And then three months later at the Women’s eNews annual gala honoring 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, where Rita Henley Jensen announced her resignation as its executive director to pursue other endeavors. Alice was there again, and this time I invited her to meet over lunch the following week.
During lunch I told her that I was interested in rejoining Women’s eNews as a board member. Alice confided how difficult the leadership transition had become with Rita’s departure and the interim executive director’s contract about to expire. I now offered to step in and help.
“I can do all of this for you,” I told Alice. She looked up from her plate, dropped her fork, and breathed a huge sigh of relief, while again displaying a wide grin. Immediately following our lunch, we put the plan in motion.
I was installed as executive director fewer than two months later in July. It wasn’t an easy time. Alice had already told me that the organization was in debt, and she was giving me six months to make it profitable, or it would be shut down. As someone who welcomes challenges, I was undeterred, and I put my creativity into motion. A critical decision to close our headquarters helped to strengthen our future, and I soon paid off all debt and made the organization profitable by launching a radio show, Women’s eNews Live, which provided us with a new and successful revenue stream. We have remained profitable ever since and Alice has remained board chair.
Four years later I called Alice and asked if I could interview her for this book. We spoke in January 2020.
Every time I see Alice, she is wearing something reminiscent of her fifty years of travel experiences in Africa. On the day of our interview, she showed me five thin bracelets circling her wrist. “These are made from elephant hair,” she said, as she rotates the bracelets with her left hand. “It’s supposed to bring good luck, and bless the wearer with health, love, and prosperity.”
I wonder whether Alice needs any luck. She’s the kind of woman who makes her own by giving to others and receiving support in return. When I asked her to share some of her backstory, she told me, “I left banking to start an international consulting business focused on Africa with my first client, a broker–dealer firm started by two friends I knew from our days as college students at Howard University. I positioned them to be chief underwriters for a large African Development Bank bond issue. Over the next several years, I sought opportunities to grow my consulting business with international institutions, such as UN agencies, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. Fast forward four years to May 1992. I was in Senegal attending the African Development Bank’s annual meeting. I had dinner with a small group that included David Bloomgarden, the advisor to the US executive director. As the topic turned political, and to that year’s upcoming US presidential campaign, he lamented that if the Republicans were to lose, his boss would have to start searching for another job. With no forethought, my natural response was, ‘Tell your boss to find another job!’” Alice now breaks out into a loud laugh, still delighted by her spontaneous response.
Soon after Bill Clinton was elected president, Alice received a call from a former international banker friend in New York who was then Washington-based and active in the private sector. “To my surprise, he asked for permission to recommend me to President-elect Clinton’s transition team for a position in the administration,” she recalled. Although her experience was ideal, there was someone who was intent on standing in her way: Larry Summers, then deputy secretary of the treasury. He was adamant that his candidate would be the next US director and sought to undermine Alice during the vetting process. Summers was also the former president of Harvard University who received a lot of backlash in 2005 after saying that there may be innate, biological differences between men and women that explained why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.
“Larry attempted to sabotage me with his claim that the treasury did not have a good relationship with the AfDB president, and because I was a close friend to the president, I was a problem,” Alice told me. “But I told him that he was looking at the situation in the wrong way: What Larry was characterizing as my weakness was actually my strength—as a close friend to the president, I would have his ear.”
Alice then called on her international network of sisters from Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority to reach out to the White House on her behalf. They lit up the switchboard. “This is yet one more example of the critical importance of other women having your back, but it also must be built before the need is there,” Alice said. “I have been a member of AKA since my sophomore year at Howard University, where the sorority was founded in 1908. These are the ladies I sat on the floor with when Howard students took over the administration building in 1968, initiating student protests that quickly followed at Columbia University and several others. These are the ladies I have bonded with, and continue to bond with, for over fifty years.” In fact, when Alice’s graduating class celebrated its fiftieth class reunion in May 2019, she helped them raise over one million dollars in merit-based scholarship funds for the Howard University Class of 1969’s reunion gift. This gift is helping Howard’s students who are in need of financial support.
Further, as a banker, Alice was an active member of the Urban Bankers’ Coalition, and witnessed the benefits of this network as well. “Over the years I have been associated with several women’s organizations and allied with community-based organizations, and the give and take, the learning and sharing of knowledge and experiences has helped all of us grow and blossom into our best selves,” she continued. “None of us can make it alone.”