How Northwestern Shaped the Lives and Careers of the 2020–21 Northwestern Alumni Medalists, with President and CEO of the California Wellness Foundation, Judy Belk ’75

CAT RECKELHOFF: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections. On today's special episode we will be highlighting the recipients of the Northwestern Alumni Association's highest honor. The Northwestern Alumni Medal celebrates alumni who have had a transformative impact on their field, who have performed exemplary volunteer service to society, or who have demonstrated an outstanding record of service and support to the University

This year's honor was bestowed to four industry leaders in the fields of public health, biotechnology, global business and retail: Judy Belk, Andrew C. Chan, Christopher B. Combe, and Gordon Segal.

This episode features excerpts from interviews conducted with the alumni medalists in January of 2020.

Judy Belk is President and CEO of the California Wellness Foundation, one of California's largest public health philanthropic institutions. Cal Wellness helps ensure underserved communities have equal access to proper health care, quality education and more.

JUDY BELK: I was born in Alexandria, Virginia in a segregated hospital 10 miles from the White House that experience, the experience of being so close to the nation's Capitol and being impacted by another place, Richmond, Virginia, which is where Jim Crow was still alive and well really impacted me. And I realized as a result of that, there are two things that are like through-lines in my life, race and place. Because I was born African American in Virginia, not across the river in Potomac. I didn't have access to running water for the first 10 years of my life. I wasn't able to go to the school that was a block from me. I had to be bused to a separate, and I always say very unequal school. My parents weren't really allowed to vote because of the poll tax. Movie theaters, swimming pools were all segregated and at a very early age it just kind of hit me that one's life could be so defined by where they lived, where they grew up and by the color of their skin.

Unfortunately race and place are still determinants of health. I run a health foundation and our North star is based on research that where people live, their economic conditions impacts, whether or not they're going to be healthy or well. African-Americans live about 11 years less than whites for no other reason than the color of the skin. So I always… I remember when I was being bused pass this perfectly all white school to this black school, about 10 miles away and I kept asking my mother, why couldn't I go... Why can't I go to that school? Because I noticed that that school had better playground equipment. It was really close to our house. I didn't have to stand out in the cold in the wet. I kept saying, "Why can't I go to that school?" I asked her a lot of questions. My mother said, "You can't go to that school because you're colored." And I said, "Why not?" You know she says because they're stupid that's why. I thought that was a really great definition of racism.

My mother who as any mother wanted the best for her child, decided to do something about it. When the NAACP legal defense fund was looking for families who would test the Brown decision in Virginia. Now mind you, the Brown decision had been decided almost 10 years earlier as I was going to school, my mother raised her hand at 25 and said the Belk girls are in, and it still was a fight. It was a huge court case. But we had support from community organizers, other six or seven other families also raised their hand. We had tremendous amount of funding support from the Jewish philanthropic community. Probably my first exposure to philanthropy. That decision changed my life, but it wasn't until we did get to go into that school, we were court ordered, we won the case. But it wasn't until I was in high school that the schools were fully integrated. The state of Virginia, the city of Alexandria, continued to fight.

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It changed my life on a variety of reasons. One, it took a collective action. It took an act of courage. Families who participated in the court case were threatened. It was they thought there was going to be violence. It was a courageous act on behalf of my mother and other families. The other issue was that it exposed me to really philanthropy and the generosity of other folks. Really the Jewish leadership community that funded it, philanthropy, they didn't know me. It was just a group of leaders saying, this is not right. Even once we got into the school, because Alexandria's position was that we were not mentally fit to attend school, they could no longer use race because of the Brown decision. They decided to say that we were just mentally, I think the court case mentally deficient. And the judge was concerned about that. Again, a group of, of students from Georgetown university said, we will tutor these kids. What if we tutor the kids to bring them up to academic standards or whatever. And so to be perfectly honest, that was my first exposure to contact with white people. I lived in a very segregated community and that almost didn't happen. Because my mother was really proud and they were going to come to our home and we did not have indoor plumbing. We didn't have a bathroom. I overheard my mother saying that we couldn't participate in the tutoring. That was part of, I think the court mandate. Finally a community organizer took my mother aside and said Miss Belk why? It was a local person that she knew and she just said, "I'm not going to have white people come in and use the outhouse." And so again, there was a lot of discussion and the decision was made that the tutors would not ask to use the bathroom when they came over and so as a result of their generosity and they had I guess strong bladders, we were tutored.

So that… It just reminded me and it reminds me every day that one advocacy is really important. We got that through the NAACP legal defense fund. Courage from every... Every parent wants the best for their children. That's what my mother did. She got a lot of recognition, got many honors because of her role in that, but she was a 25 year old mother who just wanted the best for her kids. Then remembering that it almost just fell apart the whole thing because we didn't have access to the basic necessity of water and plumbing because the city sewers system just magically stopped at the edge of town of the black community. Then the generosity of philanthropy.

I almost didn't go to Northwestern. I first heard about Northwestern from my theater coach in high school. I loved theater. I was involved in theater and she mentored me and said, "Well what do you want to do?" The only professions that I knew was being a teacher or working for the government. And she said, well there are other options. And she said, well what would you like to do? I said, I like telling stories, I like communication. She said, you can like major in communications. I said, you really can? Yeah. She said these are two institutions and Northwestern was on it. I looked and said, I don't think my father is going to let me go to Seattle. She said, "Seattle? Northwestern, it's not in Seattle." She says Northwest, I thought it was in Seattle. So we got that taken care of. Then I said, "How much does it cost?" It had a cost. And the tuition. This is really showing my age, I think, $2,700 a year. And I just kind of knew that wasn't going to happen. And she kept saying, why don't you apply? She was able to get the application fee waive and I applied. Then I had my father because I got in and he kept saying, "Where, where is Northwestern?" I said, "Well it's not in Seattle. It's somewhere... It's in Chicago near Chicago." We didn't certainly have the money. My parents hadn't gone to college, so it was no college tour or anything of that sort. And so another letter came from Northwestern and on the letter it had under parental contribution, zero. Because my father said, "We don't have money. You can't go." Then I said, "I don't think you have to pay anything." And so I remember my father still not sure that he's going to send me or let me go to this place. He had no idea where it was. So he took the, the catalog to work and he said let me just check this out. And so he came home and I mean my mother, I already had convinced her that I should go to Northwestern and my father can said, okay, I'll let you go. But if you go to Northwestern, it looks like it's in some place called Evanston. You are not allowed to go to Chicago, you're not to leave the campus. And I said, okay, deal.

I chose radio, television and film because even at an early age I was just fascinated by stories. I saw stories everywhere and when I read the description of radio and television and film it struck a chord as an opportunity to professionalize that effort and gave me skills through radio, television, and film to really enhance my skills. And in many ways, Northwestern is still sharpening my skills. With story telling and part of a through line that's really been an important part of my experience. It was a great major, but when I think about what really made a huge impact of being at Northwestern, it was really, really pushing me out of my box. I had never really been to a big city. But, when I think about what Northwestern provided to me, a window to a world that was so much bigger than my life in Virginia. And I remember going to a lecture by the poet Dennis Brutus, who was exiled from fighting apartheid in South Africa there was a lecture put on by the department of African studies. I remember being horrified and mesmerized as he described apartheid and the conditions that he experienced. He had been shot for speaking out against apartheid. I really thought I was pretty sophisticated and I really had no idea about the impact on apartheid. So Northwestern really provided that window into the world. Always kind of pushing me out of my comfort zone.

And I came to Northwestern wanting to leave the South and being concerned about social justice and didn't know how to really address that. I had my voice at Northwestern. I was really active for members only, the African American student organization. I was president of Delta Sigma Theta an African American public service organization. I was a member of the black folks theater and we performed all over Chicago, including on the cell block of Cook County jail. So as I was honing my technical skills, I was also realizing that while I wasn't really clear about what I was going to do with my life, that I knew that I wanted to use the skill set I was gathering at Northwestern for a broader purpose. To impact the greater good.

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I believe I have the best job in California. Serving as the leader of the California Wellness Foundation. Every day my job was to support an amazing group of colleagues. My job is to get up every day and get resources to Californians who are often left to [inaudible] who often don't have the voice or the resources to be healthy or well. In many ways we have an easy job. We get the resources out. The heavy lifting is done by a network of community partners. Our mission is really to recognize that where people live, their race, their economic conditions and all impact their health and wellness. We're a billion dollar foundation. A lot of money, not enough to deal with the issues that we have to address. We fund direct services, providing support to community health centers, who provide funding, support, and services to a wide variety of Californians. We also fund advocacy, holding government accountable to providing support and services, and we take on some of the most difficult health and wellness issues. For example, we're one of the largest funders of gun violence prevention in the country.

We've been talking a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion. Nice words but tough to put in place. The field of philanthropy has had its own challenges in really promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. We have not been as committed as we should in getting more resources to communities of color. As someone who has had a career where often I walk into rooms where I'm the only woman, sometimes the only woman of color and have had to put on my armor and deal with that. I found that it's... It's really uncomfortable and it's not normal today I had a foundation that the majority of our staff members are folks of color, our governing board folks, majority folks of color, majority folks of women. That feels normal. It should feel normal. It is normal in a state where the majority of residents are folks of color. As a leader, the issue is how do we continue to enhance, how do we continue to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and it's really tough. You've got to have a plan, you've got to have the resources, and you've got to have leadership at the top.

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When I think about institutions and people that have been game changers in my life, Northwestern is right up there. I try not to forget that letter that I got from Northwestern that had a zero by the name of parental contribution. I have just a tremendous amount of gratitude to Northwestern. One of my favorite, favorite ways of supporting Northwestern for four or five years, Roger and I have been opening our home and hosting the newly amended freshmen reception for Southern California students who have been admitted to Northwestern. And opening our home and seeing their parents and having other alum come and talk about that effort is the real closing the loop for me. Paying back to an institution that I really believe gave me so much, including Roger, the love of my life. I have been really just so impressed and so appreciative of being part of the C100 group.

C 100 group is a group of Northwestern women alum who are really bad ass women in terms of accomplishments. And we all share a love for Northwestern and a love to give back. And so we mentor young women, both undergraduates and other Northwestern alumni, women who are interested in finding their way. And I've chaired a peer support group of young Northwestern alum women who are interested in social change and social justice and wanting to get advice. Sometimes we feel like we're old farts when we see how much smarter and how much together even the undergraduate women are compared to what we know, but that's been really exciting. And giving back financially it's pretty easy for us. Both Rog and I received a very generous financial aid packages from Northwestern. So we have, we've always wanted to dedicate a portion of our contribution to the scholarship programs.

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When you walk into a room, there are three things that people notice about you and they usually make a negative assumption about you. Your weight, your race, and your gender. And I remember my daughter Casey, when she was young asking me, "Mom, do you think you've been discriminated more as a woman or as an African American?" It's one of those questions like, where did I come from that you want to have a real answer? I said to her that discrimination of either, whether it's because I'm black or a woman, neither are right Casey and neither feel really good. That's probably where I landed and why I'm still so passionate and pushing and raising my voice for women and especially women of color.

Two areas that I feel passionate about that's reflected in a commitment we have at Cal Wellness. One is just the impact of the AIDS epidemic. A lot of people think the epidemic is over and it's an issue that I was very involved in in the early days when so many folks in the gay community were impacted. But the epidemic is not over. It is still impacting folks of color, especially the African American community and women. That it just seems like it's been forgotten. So one of the things that we're trying to do at Cal Wellness is raise awareness about the different faces of that epidemic.

The other issue, again a personal issue is incarceration, especially the impact of women who've been formally incarcerated. The number of women's increasing to is personal. My younger sister was incarcerated for 15 years and our family supported her during that time and supported her during her re-entry. She's thriving. But women who have been incarcerated, there's a through line to the impact on the increase of children in foster care and to poverty and to all of the other issues which are linked to women. Yes, a lot of progress has been made, but women, gender and race are still barriers to far too many women and women of color. As I can use my voice to speak out against that. I will.

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CAT RECKELHOFF: Thanks for tuning into this special episode of Intersections and congratulations to our four Alumni Medalists for this incredible and prestigious honor. If you missed the President's Alumni Panel, we've included a link to the recording in the show notes. Hear President Morton Schapiro lead a discussion with the Alumni Medalists about how the University shaped their lives and careers. To our alumni listeners, if you know an alum whose life, work, and service truly exemplify the ideals of Northwestern University and deserve recognition for their accomplishments, please go to alumni.northwestern.edu/medal to access the form to nominate them; we will also include a direct link to the nomination form in the show notes.