Both sets of Catherine Bertini's grandparents emigrated from Italy and
settled in Upstate New York State.  Her father became an engineer and was
very active in leadership in Cortland, New York, where Catherine grew up.

This excellent story, from the Sunday, November 24 edition of the Albany
Times Union, requires no elaboration.  The story amply indicates the ways in
which her family environment gave her the motivation and ideologies on which
she built her fabulous career.
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Making a world of difference
THE NEW TOP ADMINISTRATOR AT THE U.N.
Started her career in Albany

Albany Times Union
By Lyrysa Smith, Staff writer
Sunday, November 24, 2002

Catherine Bertini remembers driving with her grandmother through a poor
neighborhood in Syracuse when she was a child.

Looking out at some of the people, her grandmother said, "There, but for the
grace of God, go I."

"We were taught, always, to respect and to give to others," says Bertini.
"Certainly, my family upbringing and my background have led me to do what I
do."

What she does is change people's lives for the better.

She has spent the past 10 years feeding millions of the world's hungriest
people. Now, the Cortland resident, who has long ties to Albany, will help
the United Nations be more effective in its mission to create a better and
more peaceful planet.

On Nov. 12, Bertini was appointed the U.N.'s top administrator by U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan. In his announcement, Annan said Bertini will
focus on improving communication and information technology, intensifying
efforts to recruit more women to the U.N. staff, and revamping the budget
processes.

Bertini is equally enthusiastic about her boss. "The very, very best part
about my new job is Kofi Annan. He has the most incredible sense of
integrity and a great internal drive to do the right thing always," says
Bertini.

This summer, Bertini stepped down as executive director of the U.N. World
Food Program, based in Rome, after serving a two-term, 10-year limit. The
first woman and first American to ever lead the WFP, Bertini dramatically
improved the agency's efficiency and effectiveness, enabling it to feed tens
of millions more people than ever before, according to U.N. officials.

Bertini stirred up some controversy with her initiative to emphasize the
pivotal role of women in food distribution. Her success in getting food
directly to impoverished women is one of her proudest achievements.

"When food aid is distributed to men it often ends up being consumed only by
men or even sold for profit," Bertini says. "But if food goes to women
first, more people get fed overall, including children."

Career roots in Albany

With a degree from the University at Albany in hand, Bertini began her civic
career in Albany, but her passion for helping people was nurtured years ago.

Both sets of Bertini's grandparents emigrated from Italy and settled in the
Capital Region. Bertini, 52, was born in Syracuse and grew up in Cortland.

"My parents made a commitment to raise their family in central New York,"
says Bertini, who has two brothers and a sister. "It's the quality of life
and the small-town settings and values. They felt those things were very
important."

Bertini and her husband, Tom Haskell, a photographer and also a Cortland
native, became reacquainted at their 20-year high school reunion in 1987 and
were married in 1988. They have no children.

With both their mothers and other family members in Cortland, the couple has
made the town their permanent home despite Bertini's globe-trotting career.
She has traveled, often with Haskell, to 93 countries on six continents, so
far.

Bertini's father, Fulvio Bertini, came from a family of Republicans. An
engineer by profession, Fulvio Bertini was also involved in Cortland
politics for years. When he ran for city council in 1963, it was 13-year-old
Catherine who organized a distribution system to deliver her father's
campaign literature throughout Cortland with four of her friends.

After her father was elected, Bertini went with him to city council
meetings, and was fascinated by the process of government and "the pulls and
tugs of politics."

"I would cry when my father would lose a vote on some issue," says Bertini,
with a smile. "I inherited one of his passions. He believed that involvement
and participation in the community were vitally important."

An ambitious student

She chose to attend the University at Albany because of its excellent
political science department. One of her favorite professors, Joseph
Zimmerman, remembers his ambitious student.

"She was a serious student, very well-prepared and well-organized," says
Zimmerman. "You could detect, even as an undergraduate, that she had such
potential, and a lot of talent."

While in college, Bertini worked part-time as a legislative aide for former
state Sen. Tarky Lombardi of Syracuse. She became active in the women's
movement, played clarinet in the university wind ensemble and was president
of the campus Young Republicans.

"I was able to get great experiences, academically and politically," says
Bertini, who received a distinguished alumnus award in 1987.

Bertini worked full time her senior year in the last gubernatorial campaign
of Nelson A. Rockefeller and in his office after graduating in 1971. A few
months later, Bertini became director of youth activities for the New York
Republican State Committee. She went on to do the same job for the
Republican National Committee in Washington from 1975 to 1976.

In 1977, Bertini moved to Chicago to work with the Container Corp., got
involved in her new community and even played her own political hand with a
run for Congress in 1982. Bertini didn't win, but says she ran a "passionate
and good" campaign.

Making a difference

After 10 years in the private sector, Bertini accepted a fellowship at
Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"It gave me the opportunity to step back and think about what I wanted to do
next," she says.

Bertini wrote to officials in the Reagan White House saying she wanted to do
"something in government to make a difference." She worked on welfare reform
for single mothers with the Department of Health and Human Services, and
later directed food-assistance programs and chaired the national
Breastfeeding Promotion Consortium as part of the Department of Agriculture.
In 1992, she accepted the appointment to lead the WFP.

As CEO of the largest international food-aid organization, Bertini
spearheaded a decade of change. She decentralized and streamlined the WFP
into a dynamic and responsive group, according to Raymond Offenheiser,
president of Ox Fam America, a leading anti-hunger organization, and other
U.N. observers.

She purposely hired more women and more than doubled the number of
high-ranking women in the agency. Bertini administered a record-high
operating budget of nearly $2 billion while focusing the WFP's dual mandate
of averting starvation in emergencies and implementing long-term development
projects designed to break the hunger-poverty cycle.

"I wanted to modernize the efficiency of the WFP so we could raise more
money to feed more people, and make sure food gets to the right people at
the right time, and is accounted for," Bertini says.

Large-scale reform

Under her leadership, the number of people who received WFP food aid rose to
nearly 90 million people fed each year, in more than 90 countries, up from
less than 45 million people a decade ago.

Such large-scale reform on one of the planet's most vexing problems requires
skill and toughness. A petite, soft-spoken woman, Bertini is not afraid to
use her presence on the world's stage to impose her views.

With her WFP colleagues, Bertini successfully stood down the Taliban,
demanding that women be allowed to work in bakery projects in Afghanistan to
feed starving widows. She has been through disasters in India, Ethiopia,
Somalia and Rwanda, and helped avert severe famine in North Korea by
negotiating to feed 50,000 farmers so they could keep producing food to feed
others.

Still, Bertini did not please everyone at the WFP, according to Jon
Margolis, a journalist and author who has followed Bertini's career since
her Albany days and wrote a small book about the WFP. Margolis says there
was grumbling and resistance among some WFP staffers over Bertini's agenda
for substantial alterations. Some complained that Bertini had a heavy-handed
style and tended to micromanage.

Overall, however, the WFP staff applauded Bertini's open-door policy and
willingness to consult with staff members, as well as her ability to listen
to those the WFP serves, says Margolis.

It's all been good preparation for her work ahead, although her new job as
the U.N.'s chief manager will have her sitting behind a desk more than she's
used to.

"I guess I've been learning these skills for decades -- since I was 13, with
my father's literature distribution," Bertini says. "I can continue to use
the skills God gave me to make a positive difference in people's lives."
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Ms. Lyrysa Smith email address is << lsmith@timesunion.com>> 
A complimentary note on a fine article, and a welcome relief from the Albany 
Times usual fixation on Mafia is a welcome relief would be helpful.
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'Making a world of difference' - timesunion.com 
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=75281&category=
LIFE&newsdate=11/24/2002