Making things better, moving on

When she was 4, Judy Vredenburgh informed her mother that she didn't need her help to tie her shoelaces. So she plopped herself into a corner of the living room and didn't get up until she had mastered the skill.

One hour later, she was a standing expert.

Moral of the story: When Judy Vredenburgh locks onto a task - particularly one with strings attached - it would take an act of Congress to dissuade her.

So it has been since 1999 for Vredenburgh and the national Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, headquartered in Philadelphia and the country's oldest and largest mentoring organization.

As she prepares to step down in June as the first female president and chief executive officer in the group's 105-year history, Vredenburgh has built an impressive legacy.

During her tenure, the Logan Circle native more than doubled the number of at-risk children served per year, to 255,000, and increased annual revenue by 70 percent, to $290 million.

She boosted the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics among "bigs" (adult mentors) and "littles" (5-to-18-year-olds). Her outreach program for children of prisoners grew to 36,000 last year.

In 2002, she made a place at the table for homosexual mentors, a move that triggered 16,000 angry e-mails in the first 24 hours. She hung tough: "I have a lot of courage to do what I think is right."

Now, at 59, it's right for Vredenburgh to return to New York and reestablish residency with her husband, a professor at City University of New York's business school. He's been the commuting spouse for a decade.

They met cute at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. She was a junior, looking for a summer job. He was in Wharton, temping in the student employment office as a way to meet women. Their 15-minute interview stretched into an hour.

"Judy is not a 'cool' person in the traditional sense," says Donald Vredenburgh, 65. "Because of her extreme decency, goodness, and compassion about people, there is nothing casual about her."

The Obama White House thinks so. It recently appointed her to its new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Advisory Council.

The 25-person volunteer body, which held its first briefing Tuesday in Washington, will advise President Obama on domestic policy around children and families in poverty. It meets formally four times a year.

By her own description, Vredenburgh is a serious character whose idea of a good time is curling up with the Harvard Business Review. She is constitutionally incapable of telling a joke, but laughs easily and from the belly when she hears one.

Along with her social-justice ideals, Vredenburgh has an overarching professional characteristic that is still not universally embraced in a woman - the drive to be boss.

"I like to be in charge," she says. "I think I'm a leader, and at this stage, I need to be a leader. I have no problem making decisions. I'm very comfortable with power and the use of power for good."

The couple's only child, Cynthia Vredenburgh, 31, a New York marketing executive, characterizes her mother as "a four-star general with a heart. Cool, calm, collected. She has a commander-in-chief personality."

That personality isn't always easily received, her husband acknowledges: "Judy can be demanding, but it's all about performance. She's very focused on objectives."

Cynthia Vredenburgh puts it another way.

"She wants an answer now. There's always an urgency. She's good if you're a top performer. The standards in our house were rigorous. It could have been oppressive, but she knew when to back off."

Jill Stolbach, 56, a private academic tutor in Dallas, says her real-life big sister is a softie.

"People don't know how warm and fuzzy Judy is on the inside. She's sensitive. She's a wonderful listener and has very good judgment. As a sister, she's a 10."

Vredenburgh mere concedes that she's "not a naturally nurturing person," despite her good intentions. She is caring and supportive, she says, and her family agrees.

Her directness in business may not score high on diplomacy, but it makes Vredenburgh's objectives unambiguously clear. "The most important thing is to give voice to who you really are, let that rip, and people can deal with it."

In her former life, Vredenburgh did her ripping in the retail-clothing industry, pulling down a $500,000 salary at her peak.

Ironically, she couldn't care less about clothes. Four times a year, she buys outfits from a trunk collection in a woman's home. "Aesthetics are not my thing," she says. "I'm totally people oriented."

Vredenburgh made her transition to the nonprofit world in 1992 as a volunteer with Big Sisters of New York City. The same year, she joined March of Dimes as a senior vice president.

It was all part of a career plan she designed as a Penn undergrad. If she used the first half to do well, she could use the second to do good.

The two are not mutually exclusive, of course. Vredenburgh's current salary is $334,750.

"I wanted two sequential careers," she says. "In one, I would show that women could achieve and break the glass ceiling for profit. In the second, I would enact full-time my deep values. I didn't know exactly how or when I'd do it."

For the first 20-plus years of Vredenburgh's blueprint, it didn't hurt that her husband, whom she labels "a perfect academic who loves the world of ideas," had no interest in money.

"It allowed me to be as powerful and make as much money as I wanted to," she says. "It was absolutely no issue in our relationship."

March of Dimes was an easy call. Cynthia, a preemie who weighed just 3 pounds at birth, was treated in a neonatal intensive-care unit underwritten by the foundation, which fights birth defects.

Seven years later, Philadelphia was the logical move.

Joe Radelet, BBBS's vice president of mentoring programs and Vredenburgh's second hire, says he and most of his colleagues at the organization's 400 agencies appreciate their leader's transparency.

"When you have somebody as blunt as she is, yet respects you personally, that's a tricky thing to do, but she does it," says Radelet, 62, formerly chief of the Detroit chapter. "Make no mistake about it, Judy requires results, but she has judgment and a sense of fairness."

Among Vredenburgh's continuing goals is to increase male mentors, who make up 36 percent of volunteers nationally, 40 percent in Southeast Pennsylvania.

She wants that mentoring pool to be more ethnically diverse, too. Among male volunteers nationally, only 5 percent are black, 3 percent Hispanic. Female mentors are also dominantly white.

Overall, despite a spike of 25 percent in potential mentors this year, there is a long waiting list of children, Vredenburgh says.

"Bigs" are encouraged to make a one-year commitment, spending time with their "littles" at least two to three times a month.

On average, community-based matches last 22 months, twice the length of school-based matches. Vredenburgh wants to lengthen the latter, which have grown to 50 percent of all matches.

The longer the match, the deeper and more lasting the positive results. According to independent national research, children mentored by BBBS get along better with their families, and are less likely to begin using drugs and alcohol and to skip school.

That Vredenburgh is leaving her job without having another lined up - particularly in this economy - underscores her reputation as "an unbelievable risk-taker," in her sister's words. "She'll work again. She's not a worrier."

She doesn't need to be.

"Throughout my whole life, I've been lucky," says the biggest Big Sister. "Circumstances seem to come my way."

If you want to be a Big Brother or Big Sister,

go to the organization's national site - http://www.bigbrothersbigsisters.org - and click on "find my local agency." Enter your zip code, and you will be guided to the agency closest to you.

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