While undergoing chemotherapy the last five years of her life, philanthropist Barbara Finberg used each hiatus in treatment as a window to go wherever her counsel was sought. “She was like the beagle in the Peanuts cartoon,” says her colleague and friend of 55 years, Margaret E. Mahoney, “goggled and ready to fly.”
In 38 years as program officer and corporate officer with the Carnegie Corporation, Finberg oversaw grants totaling at least $100 million. A former member of the University’s Board of Trustees, Finberg died of breast cancer March 5 at her home in New York City. She was 76.
The daughter of a schoolteacher and a lumber company owner, Finberg grew up in Pueblo and Grand Junction, Colo. She skipped second and seventh grades, and at age 16 entered Stanford, following in the footsteps of her mother, Velma Hopper, ’22, and her aunt, Veta Hopper, ’23.
“I really lost my best friend [when she went to college],” says her brother Robert Denning, ’53, MBA ’55. “But Barbara blossomed at Stanford. She made lots of friends and she was a member of Cap and Gown.” In addition to majoring in international relations, Finberg studied piano and cello.
She worked for the State Department from 1949 to 1953 and received her master’s degree in international relations from American University in Beirut in 1951. On the way to Beirut, aboard the Volendam, she met her husband-to-be, Alan Finberg, who became general counsel of The Washington Post Co. He died in 1995.
She administered the American Fulbright program for Germany until 1958, when Mahoney recruited her to work with Carnegie Corporation president John Gardner, ’33, MA ’36. Finberg oversaw the 1965 founding grant for the Children’s Television Workshop (producer of Sesame Street and other shows) and the extensive research on its results. “It created the model for heavily evidence-based innovation,” explains Carnegie Foundation president Lee Shulman, an emeritus professor of education.
A Stanford trustee from 1976 to 1986, Finberg received the Gold Spike Award, the University’s highest honor for volunteerism, in 1988. Former University president Donald Kennedy, speaking at her memorial service, said Finberg’s “vision was extraordinarily clear, good enough to see around a corner to the next problem.”
Embodying personal as well as corporate philanthropy, Finberg made many donations, including $1 million to endow the directorship of Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender in 1997. She bequeathed $1 million to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She sat on the boards of numerous organizations including Bard Music Center and the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. “She combined good judgment with knowledge,” says Helene L. Kaplan, chair of the board of Carnegie Corporation. “A great conciliator, she had a gentle way of asking questions that were very tough. She did not cave to mediocrity.”
