Stephen Viederman

Stephen Viederman, Grandparent

Stephen Viederman, an advocate for sustainable finance and a creative leader in the foundation world, died on December 11, 2023 at the age of 88. Steve's life was characterized by remarkable intelligence and an unshakeable commitment to equity and fairness. He had a varied career of impactful work, which towards the end of his life he summed as:

"I realize that my vocation...is Grandparenting. This includes ... my grandchildren... and all grandchildren around the world...because my grandchildren's heritage cannot be secure unless all grandchildren's heritages are secure. There is no moat that can separate them from the world."

Steve was born in Jamaica, Queens on March 21, 1935. His parents, Dorothy Edelberg and Joe Viederman, were immigrant New Yorkers who owned a haberdashery in Freeport, Long Island.

Steve's intellect distinguished him. He skipped not one but two elementary school grades before studying at Brooklyn Tech High School. He matriculated at Columbia University at the age of 16 (as a low-income, 'promising' New Yorker he received tuition support from the Ford Foundation).

During college he was introduced by a mutual friend to a Barnard student named Gretchen Sue Langrock. He was immediately smitten, and they married two years later on June 6, 1957. Steve did a Master's in History at Columbia while Gretchen finished her Bachelor's degree.

Upon finishing his degree Steve was recruited to the first of what became a career of pioneering roles that intersected American institutions with the imperatives of equity, peace and cross-cultural understanding. In 1959 he became staff director of the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants, a deceptively bland title for the organization that managed the tricky first-ever academic exchanges with the Soviet Union. This led him on several long trips to the USSR where he met aspiring Russian students, drank a fair amount of vodka, got a light case of frostbite on his toes at Tolstoy's house, and was once nervously detained by the Russian authorities before finally being allowed to board his flight back to the safety of the West.

The Inter-University Committee switched hosts to Indiana University, so he and Gretchen moved from New York City to Bloomington, Indiana. Their two children were born there. After five years they returned to the New York Metropolitan area.

Steve worked in New York City for the next thirty five years at the Carnegie Corporation, the Population Council and at the United Nations. He traveled extensively: including to Bucharest, Romania in 1974 where he was Executive Director of the NGO side event at the World Population Conference; and to visit his children in Italy and China where they were occasionally located. (We count over 40 countries on his life list.)

Steve had a forgettable tenure at the United Nations Population Fund, thanks to his unsuitability for a big political bureaucracy. But three exceptional sidelines emerged during this time. First, he began to cook - Indian food initially (jalebis were his kids' favorite), but ultimately any cuisine that was new to him and for which he could find an interesting cookbook. (His impressive collection was later donated to Kitchen Arts and Letters on the Upper East Side.) Second, he began to buy and sell used books. This meant frequent trips to the post office to send merchandise to buyers; regular stops at used book stores, particularly Rodgers Book Barn in Hillsdale, NY; dusty piles of antique tomes in his study, the attic and other inconvenient places around the house; and gifts to his kids of various volumes of interest, notably a repeat gift of The Secret of Santa Vittoria to his daughter, and several hundred books about China to his son. And third, he took so many photos - prints of his delightful pictures enliven his home to this day - reminders of deeply influential trips to Nepal, Iran, Italy, India, China, Australia, many of them with Gretchen.

Steve's most satisfying career period came when he was named President of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, the perfect opportunity for him to blend his creativity, leadership, ability to listen and learn, willingness to challenge his own beliefs, and commitment to have an impact on the world around him. Steve was instrumental in redirecting the Foundation's giving to focus on under-served geographies and communities. Under his leadership, the Noyes Foundation pioneered grant-making in support of environmental justice, reproductive rights, and labor/community/political organizing, mostly in the South and Southwest of the United States. The Foundation also introduced a program to support environmental justice in the New York area. He loved the community members he worked with, took on their causes as his own, and continuously learned from them.

Steve's signature achievement while at Noyes was to build a mission-aligned investment program to, as he put it, ''reduce dissonance." The Foundation owned stock in some of the corporations whose policies and practices its grantees opposed. Under Steve's leadership the Noyes Foundation was the first philanthropy to file a shareholder resolution - at Intel-- on behalf of its grantee - the Southwest Organizing Project. As part of this work the Foundation made commercial investments from its endowment in mission-oriented businesses. Other foundations have built on this initial effort, though to Steve's frustration this obvious and impactful practice has not yet spread as widely as he hoped.

Steve retired at the age of 65 to a later career of service on Boards, prolifically writing and speaking about sustainable investing and how philanthropy could do better. During his retirement he made ample time to play with, teach, bond with, impress, delight in, and just plain love his grandkids. It was during this period that he realized his broader vocation was Grandparenting.

He is survived, celebrated, and deeply missed by Gretchen, his wife of 66 years; his two children, Laura and Dan, and their spouses Michael Caton-Jones and Mary Jo Laffey Viederman; his adoring grandchildren: William, Hannah, Romy, Charlie, Daisy and Molly; by his brother Milton and sister-in-law Nelly; by nephews and nieces Eric and Amanda Beldoch, Anne and Matthew Viederman and their spouses; and by Buddy the dog. Steve's entire family takes great pride in his life; inspiration from his warmth, dedication and sense of purpose; and joy from his delight in those around him.

In lieu of flowers, donations maybe made to an organization that meant a great deal to Steve: the New Mexico-based Southwest Organizing Project at https://www.swop.net/donate