Remembering Jeffrey Leonard

Some news slices through the fog of email, to-do lists, and daily calendars and just sits with you, leaden and painful. So it is with an email I received last Saturday, an email I read and re-read, trying to wrap my mind around its contents. Jeff Leonard, New America board member, adviser, supporter and friend, was dead. A heart attack. He was only 64 years old, and as full of vitality and energy as anyone I have ever known.

You can read about him here. As Sharon Burke, director of New America’s program on resource security, put it, Jeff “pioneered that intersection of climate change, clean energy, and profit. He proved that green is good—that investors can do good and well all at the same time, when it comes to one of humanity's great challenges.” As co-founder and CEO of the Global Environmental Fund, he was far ahead of the field in environmental investing.

What no obituary or C.V. can possibly capture, however, is how much Jeff enriched the lives of those who knew him. His fellow board members at New America exchanged messages of shock, grief, and tribute; as one wrote, “Jeff was such a wonderful, engaged and caring person. He was an exemplary board member. He was diligent and thorough as a shepherd for all things related to our financials, and just about anything else. If Jeff was ‘on the job’ it lightened the load on everyone else. He was the embodiment of ‘doing the right thing when no one is watching.’ I only knew him as a fellow director of New America, but his character and goodwill were evident and compelling. Integrity, humility and kindness… and just a great guy.”

For Jeff, his family and his personal passions were just as important as his professional identity.

“Doing the right thing when no one is watching.” That is the line that keeps running through my head, so striking in a world in which so many of us broadcast everything we do precisely to ensure that someone is watching. Jeff had an old-fashioned, non-transactional view of duty and morality, in which doing the right thing was an end in itself. His example was infectious, reminding all of us why we do the work we do, striving to make a difference in the world through a non-profit organization whether or not we are lauded or rewarded for it.

Jeff also radiated a zest for life—every aspect of life. On his C.V., right at the top, under “Profession and Present Position,” he listed “Personal,” with two lines: “Married, Three Children,” and just below that, “Marathon Runner (14).” Three pages chronicling his professional life followed—education (B.A. Harvard, M.Sc. London School of Economics, Ph.D Princeton), jobs, honors, membership on 19 non-profit and for-profit boards, and a long list of publications. Most of us, including me, list a few lines about our family and our hobbies at the end. But for Jeff, his family and his personal passions were just as important as his professional identity. That is my kind of man.

Those passions were not limited to running. He was an avid skier and loved to fly-fish—something I only discovered when New America’s CFAO, Barry Howard, who worked closely with Jeff in his capacity as Treasurer and Chair of the Board Finance Committee, told me that Jeff often fished at a stream in Maryland near Barry’s house. They had made plans to fish together soon.

An intellectual athlete as much as a physical one, Jeff had authored or co-authored five books and many articles, both academic and popular. We named him a Senior Fellow in Global Studies this year (unpaid) on the strength of a book proposal he sent us outlining a book on the changing flows and nature of investment in the global economy. He traced the shift from direct governmental foreign development aid to massive flows of funds into foreign direct investment (FDI), from private equity groups, sovereign wealth funds, and a new generation of multi-national enterprises that are often state-backed. Jeff was particularly worried about the role of China in investing in infrastructure designed to strip natural resources from developing countries and pour them into the Chinese economy.

Services for Jeff will be held this Sunday at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. I predict that no matter how big the space, it will be too small to hold the crowd of family members, friends, colleagues, employees, and mentees who will attend. They will come to pay their respects, mourn together, and try to find some small measure of solace in celebrating his life.

I will not be among them, as much as I want to be. I will be on a trip with my husband planned six months ago and impossible to postpone. As I wrestled with what I should do, one of our colleagues pointed out that Jeff himself would have been the first person to insist that I go on my trip. He not only treasured his own family, he invested in their time together. The holidays brought cards with pictures of all the Leonards lined up on skis or in kayaks from locations all around the world, taking evident pleasure in each other’s company. May their love and strength carry them through these darkest days.

David Brooks has written of the difference between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues,” urging us to think about what we want to be remembered for rather than mindlessly piling up achievements. Jeff did indeed live his life that way, but his eulogy comes far too soon.