In June of 2024, Portland Japanese Garden welcomed Caryl Stern to speak at the annual reception for its Golden Crane Recognition Society, a group of donors whose profound generosity helps the organization’s immediate and long-term vitality. For more than 40 years, Stern has tirelessly worked in service to others, including a decade-plus tenure as President and CEO of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) USA and as Executive Director for the Walton Family Foundation. Stern is currently Chief Impact Officer for LionTree, an independent investment and merchant bank, where she focuses on philanthropic efforts through impact investing in products and services that will work toward solving global problems.
Ahead of her remarks, Stern sat down with us to chat about her work and blossoming friendship with Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute. The landscape made an immediate impression on her. “There’s an aura to this place you feel as soon as you arrive,” Stern noted. “The architecture is magnificent. Just the juxtaposition of the green and blue skies and natural wood—the colors are magnificent. Everything you see represents that whole notion of the Garden being a place of peace.”
Portland Japanese Garden was established in 1963 in the aftermath of the tragedies of World War II, when hostility toward those of Japanese ancestry was more frequent and more intense than it is in contemporary times. Its founders correctly predicted that through nature-based cultural diplomacy, a better understanding of Japanese culture could be shared to foster appreciation and perhaps even friendship. The story of the Garden’s founding resonates with Stern, whose own family sought peace in a world that treated them cruelly simply because of their ancestry.
“My 91-year-old mother is a child of the Holocaust,” Stern shared. “She came to the United States when she was six with her four-year-old brother with neither of their parents. They wound up living in an orphanage on the lower east side of Manhattan. That experience, instead of rendering her angry, rendered her thankful. She felt blessed that people cared enough to bring her over an ocean and take care of her. This inspired my mother to raise us to not only be proud Americans, but to be proud that we could exercise the rights the U.S. enabled in us—standing up and helping those who may not be able to stand up for themselves.”
“We lived in a modern world, but kept traditions,” Stern continued, reflecting on her Jewish upbringing. “Friday nights we lit Shabbos candles together, we’d bless the challah. You could go out afterwards, but you had to be at home at that table first. It taught me to stop, to reflect. When I think about what my mother experienced, and how she raised me, the Garden resonates with me because it’s built on so many of the same ideas. [Portland Japanese Garden] was built on healing and forgiving, it’s built on learning and taking the time to find common ground. It’s built on the concept of stopping and reflecting and finding new ways to connect.”
Stern also sees the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repair the world” or “heal the world”) present in Portland Japanese Garden. “When someone asks me, ‘What does tikkun olam mean?’ I always say it means leaving the campsite better than you found it,” Stern explained. “God created the earth, but he didn’t finish the job. And so it’s our job to see that through to completion, to better the world. The Garden does this. For example, the trees that have been planted. You will not live to see a tree through its life if you plant it well. You are planting the seed for someone else. And that’s the leap behind leaving the earth better than you found it.”
If Stern sees this capacity in Portland Japanese Garden to foster healing, forgiveness, and betterment, it is because her life work embodies these characteristics. Stern has coupled her work with time as a board member for organizations such as the We Are Family Foundation, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation, and the United Nations International School. Her work today with LionTree differs in many ways from Portland Japanese Garden—but that’s a good thing. A better tomorrow cannot be achieved by just one approach. The Garden and the sibling organization through which it is expanding its programming, Japan Institute, are always looking to build connections and relationships with likeminded individuals and organizations that take different avenues toward peace.
“I work in the intersection of purpose and profit,” Stern explained. “I explore new models that will make investments into companies that are making products or providing services that will solve world problems. Whereas philanthropy will live in the moment, we get to work with long-term strategies. It’s the difference between cleaning up pollution and investing in companies that will make products that ultimately result in less pollution. The world is looking to corporate America to solve problems, so I’m excited to see how I can capitalize on this moment to create a more sustainable future.”
In 2023, Stern served as keynote speaker at three International Peace Symposia, offered by the Japan Institute. The series of gatherings featured leaders from numerous cultural, intellectual, and diplomatic fields coming together to discuss the evolving role of public spaces as the platforms for peacebuilding and community engagement. “[Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute CEO Steve Bloom] and I got on the phone after we were connected by mutual friend who knew we were both working towards peace in the world,” Stern remembered. “It was instant friendship. He invited me to speak at the New York and South Africa Peace Symposia.”
A longtime New Yorker, Stern enjoyed connecting with people that hadn’t met before at the New York Peace Symposium and found her experience in South Africa to be moving. “There were kids from the townships there,” Stern noted, referring to communities across the nation that had been built during the nation’s apartheid era in which Black South Africans were forced into squalor, often just yards away from wealthy and predominantly white communities. The ugliness of this unqualified racism is still prevalent today—the townships are still predominantly Black and still lack many basic services and utilities.
“I’ve worked and spent my career in these townships—I’ve been to Johannesburg more times than I can count,” Stern shared. “Having the kids from these townships in the same spaces with world leaders, artists, and noted journalists was pretty remarkable.”
“I have amazingly warm and phenomenal feelings about the Garden,” she continued. “This garden brought people together, people from all across the globe, people anxious to work together to bring peace to our world. We gathered to learn from one another and to experience the appreciation of beauty that affiliation to this organization brings. Furthermore, this garden, like all spaces for peace, is a catalyst for innovation and progress. It inspires creativity by sharing its magnificence and by showing us the pure glory that is achieved by its diversity–the enhancement of the beauty of each individual plant by its placement near others that are completely different.”
Stern’s desire to foster peace is perhaps mostly keenly felt through her genuine affinity for young people. She has made it a point to make sure new generations of leaders are in the rooms that will shape our future now. When she was asked what can be done to empower these young people, she recounted a meaningful moment she had while serving as President and CEO of UNICEF USA. Here is that story, later shared during her remarks at the Golden Crane Society annual reception in the summer of 2024, in its entirety:
“Faced with a terrible famine in the north of Kenya, I was thrilled when Prince William and his then new bride, Kate, joined forces with Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, offering to assist UNICEF in packing a 747 plane with supplies to draw the world’s attention to the plight of Kenya’s starving people. With four colleagues, I flew to Copenhagen, met the princes and princesses at the UNICEF warehouse there, and carried supplies–box by box–until the cargo hold was filled and every luggage compartment on board was bursting. We then bid the royals farewell and flew to Nairobi where we unpacked the 747 into numerous smaller planes and flew to a remote airport in the desert.”
“There we unloaded the boxes into Jeeps and sent them on ahead to [Kakuma Refugee Camp] while we met with government officials there. Finally, an hour later, we left for Kakuma. We drove through the desert–miles and miles of sand and heat–not a living thing in sight. After an hour or so, our driver had to relieve himself and so we pulled our Jeep to a stop. To allow him privacy, I turned to the right and fixed my eyes on the huge sand dune in front of me. Suddenly, over the top came a woman. She was so emaciated I could not begin to tell her age and she was holding the hand of an equally emaciated child.”
“She froze as did I when we each caught sight of the other. Her fierce look told me she was terrified but ready to fight if necessary. We stood like that for a few minutes–she looking down at me with the child now safely tucked behind her, me looking up at her trying to imagine just where she had come from. Then, she rubbed her belly and held out her hand, letting me know she was hungry. All of our supplies were an hour further down the road but then I remembered I had grabbed an apple off the 747 from NYC to Copenhagen and had tucked it into my backpack. I found it and threw it up to her. She caught it, looked me in the face, and bowed in gratitude. The apple, something that meant so little to me, meant the world to her.”
“I tell you this story because we all have apples in our backpacks. We all have something to give–it may be dollars, it may be time, it may be wisdom, it may be skills or talents. The challenge is to be willing to dig down deeply, find it and share it. That is what creates a space for peace.”
Article written by Will Lerner, Communications Manager for Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute