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| First Person |
Better to Give
Joan Hornig
11/01/2007
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 Joan Hornig, 52, was a hedge fund manager who gave up Wall Street
to start a philanthropic business with a high-end product: her own limited-edition jewelry designs. Sales clerks at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth
Avenue, and some-times Hornig herself, will engage browsers in conversation and
explain that the designs she describes as "powerful, not too
quiet"—including multistrand onyx necklaces, South Sea pearl drop earrings and
Lucite bracelets inscribed with messages such as "Philanthropy is beautiful"—are
accessories with a social mission. All profits go to a charity of the buyer’s
choice. For the undecided, Hornig has a long list of her favorite choices,
all organizations with some kind of educational initiative. Oprah Winfrey
and Laura Bush have bought her jewelry, and Hornig has raised more than $300,000
for some 170 charities since launching the business in 2003.
Around the time I got out of
college, I said that if I got what I wanted from life I would give 100 percent
back by the time I was 50. Now I give that much and more.
I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland and went to a public high
school. My father was a consulting actuary. He had been the number two actuary
in the Truman administration, but he didn’t go into business for himself until
he was in his 50s. My mother was a schoolteacher and all-around creative person.
So my parents were not particularly affluent. But they were generous. They
defined generosity as not being covetous of what you do not have. I was the
first generation in my family to go to college back East. I graduated in fine
arts—now called art history—from Harvard. After college I worked in development
at Radcliffe, and then as the director of corporate relations in external
development for Columbia Business School, where I was pursuing an MBA. I loved
my development years, but the president of Paine Webber, who was one of my
volunteers, recruited me for a job, and I ended up working on Wall Street for
more than two decades.
My biggest risk was just disappointment. I would have been disappointed if it hadn’t worked. |
In my work, I came to understand that people give money away
for several reasons. Of course they believe it will do something good, but
another important reason is that it proves to them that they believe in
themselves and their ability to continue to make investments that will cover
their costs. The odds are they are not giving it away to the point of a
sacrifice.
I also realized very early on that I was on a path where I
could give away money without any great loss. Still, it was Sept. 11 that
solidified it for me. I felt so lucky. I had my apartment, and my two daughters
and my husband, and we were all safe. However, I did lose my former next-door
neighbor, from when I lived on Long Island, a kid just out of college who had
been over the evening before visiting us.
The other thing that alarmed me after Sept. 11 was that we
started a trend of giving to disaster relief, which is wonderful, but philanthropists should be proactive as well as reactive, and give to causes that
are small and quiet.
I was good at creative fundraising, so I decided that one of my
obligations was to figure out a way to challenge people to give in a way that
didn’t hurt. And I have always loved jewelry. I think of it as portable
sculpture. It also involves an understanding of math and proportions. It has to
rest well and look good when a woman is walking away. So I started a business
making jewelry, with all of the profits going to charity. I get up at 5 am and
work on designs on my bedroom floor. I get inspiration partly from paying
attention to where people are going and what they’re doing with their money. If
a lot of people are traveling to Africa, for example, then I know it’s a good
time to incorporate an African aesthetic into my designs. I watch travel and
leisure and economics patterns around the world.
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