Call me Madam: New US Ambassador to Luxembourg

I asked the question on

facebook:

WHOIZZIT?

Cynthia Stroum

Founding Chairman

Seattle, Washington

Cynthia Stroum received her Bachelor of Arts degree in public relations/journalism cum laude from the University of Southern California. After graduation, Cynthia stayed in Los Angeles and worked in the film industry, eventually producing national television commercials. Returning home to Seattle, she became involved in community service, establishing two philanthropic foundations as well as handling her personal investments in start-up businesses (Starbuck’s being one of them). Cynthia was a Tony nominated producer for the 2004 Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun. After recently completing her maximum term as a trustee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, she was appointed a member of the Senior Council. She has served on the boards of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Northwest School for Hearing-Impaired Children, Channel 9/KCTS (Public Television), the Jewish Television Network, University Prep (a private school in Seattle), The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, A Contemporary Theatre and The Shoah Foundation (founded by Steven Spielberg). She was a Washington State Arts Commissioner and also served on Senator Patty Murray’s (D-WA) and Senator Maria Cantwell’s (D-WA) executive finance and planning committees. Cynthia continues to be politically active and is on the Obama for America National Finance Committee. Since her father’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2000 and subsequent death a year later, Cynthia has helped to bring greater visibility to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) as the founding Chairman of the Board. In addition to raising critical funding for research to fund a cure, she has played an important role in helping to move PanCAN’s legislative agenda through Congress. She also tirelessly speaks to families all over the country who are battling pancreatic cancer.

WHAT does she do?

http://download.rtl.lu/COM-CStroum.doc

Embassy of the United States of America
LUXEMBOURG
22, blvd Emmanuel Servais – L-2535 Luxembourg
Public Affairs Section – Tel. +352 46 01 23 – Fax +352 26 27 04 37

Press Release

Ms. Cynthia Stroum
Nominated next Ambassador of the United States of America
to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.



September 12, 2009

On September 11, 2009 President Barack Obama announced the nomination of Ms. Cynthia Stroum as the next Ambassador of the United States of America to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Following is the text of President Obama’s statement regarding Ambassador-designate Stroum:

“Cynthia Stroum, Nominee for Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
A native of Seattle, (in the state of Washington) Cynthia Stroum has been an angel investor in over twenty successful technology, biotechnology and retail start-up companies, including Starbucks Coffee Company. Over the last 30 years, Ms. Stroum has also been active in civic and charitable activities focusing on philanthropy and community service, establishing two non-profit foundations, with a particular focus on cancer research. Ms. Stroum has helped to bring greater visibility to pancreatic cancer, serving on the board of The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and as the Founding Chairman of the Board of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN). She has also served on the board of the Shoah Foundation. Previous to her business and philanthropic ventures, Ms. Stroum worked in the television and film industries and continues her commitment to the arts. Ms. Stroum made her Broadway producing debut in 2004 with the acclaimed Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, earning her a Tony nomination. Ms. Stroum holds a BA in Public Relations and Journalism from the University of Southern California.”

In the near future, Ambassador-designate Stroum will testify before a Senate panel; her nomination must be confirmed by the United States Senate before she will come to Luxembourg. She is expected to arrive sometime this Fall to present her credentials to Grand Duke Henri and begin her work as President Obama’s personal representative in the Grand Duchy.

To follow Ms. Stroum’s nomination process, please visit the U.S. Embassy Luxembourg website or Facebook page:
http://luxembourg.usembassy.gov/
http://www.facebook.com/

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Patron Samuel Stroum,

known to many as godfather

of giving,

dies at 79

By Carole Beers

Seattle Times staff reporter

Samuel J. Stroum, a monumental and largely self-made figure in Seattle arts, business and Jewish affairs, whose philanthropy helped individuals as well as health and educational institutions, and entire arts companies, leaves an incalculable legacy.Mr. Stroum died Friday (March 9) after an 11-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 79.Considered by many to be the godfather of Seattle giving, who almost single-handedly saved the Seattle Symphony from bankruptcy, and whose money and persuasiveness helped build Benaroya Hall, he got others to give partly because he gave so willingly."We cannot imagine the world without him because he was such a force," said Cynthia Stroum, his daughter and principal of Sam Stroum Enterprises. "He inspired many generations to give of themselves. We've received phenomenal e-mails and letters. People weren't afraid to tell him that they loved him."Mr. Stroum's wealth seemed to grow exponentially from his one-time holdings in Schuck's auto-parts stores and other concerns. But the stocky, white-haired patriarch, an early owner of the Seattle Seahawks, said he wanted only to provide for his family and community."I don't want to wait until I am dead," Stroum liked to say. "It's too much fun giving while I am alive, and I can see the results."He typically gave away $2 million or more per year, notably since his retirement from the active business world in the mid-1980s. Each year he also helped raise millions more.Gifts from his and his wife's foundations have touched some 300 organizations including the Jewish Federation of Seattle, the University of Washington, the Seattle Art Museum, Medic One, the Northwest School for the Hearing Impaired and various hospitals.In 1990 he offered to buy the bankrupt Paramount Theatre for the symphony for $5 million, but the theater owner backed out."(Sam) takes vast pleasure in giving away money," former UW President William Gerberding told The Times in 1990. "And he gives away far more than he can deduct.""It's a mission for him. An absolute mission," Paul Skinner, president of Skinner Corp. and son of the late philanthropist Ned Skinner, said for the same article.Although Mr. Stroum did not go beyond high school, he was a longtime board member of Seafirst Bank and a two-term former chairman of the UW Medical Center board. He also was a past-president of the UW Board of Regents."I think that Sam was one of the people who was instrumental in me looking at philanthropy seriously," said Herman Sarkowsky, a Seattle developer and philanthropist."As far back as the 1970s, he started talking to me about philanthropy in general and got me interested in things I hadn't really paid that much attention to. I sort of used him as my guide."Mr. Stroum rose from a job as a wholesale sundries salesman after World War II to found an electronics distribution company, ALMAC/Stroum Electronics. In the '60s, he bought the region's most popular auto-parts chain, Schuck's Auto Supply.He sold ALMAC in the '70s. In 1984, with son-in-law and Schuck's President Stuart Sloan, he sold the expanded Schuck's chain for $70 million in an ill-fated deal with Pay 'n Save.Savvy in venture-capital projects as well, he was a hunch investor in biotech firms such as Imre and Procyte, and an early investor in Advanced Technology Laboratories, Egghead Discount Software and many small technology start-ups.Local legend has it that 20 years ago, when Mary Gates worried that her son, Bill Gates III, was dropping out of Harvard to focus on his fledgling software company, she sat her son down with Mr. Stroum for some advice over lunch. Mrs. Gates was a UW regent and civic activist who first worked with Mr. Stroum on a United Way campaign.Mr. Stroum encouraged young Gates to forget Harvard and continue with his plans for what has become Microsoft.Money was never his motivation, said his daughter Cynthia Stroum. Her father loved the art of business and strategic thinking, and he loved helping people. He had such an impact on the 12th-floor staff at Swedish Medical Center that the nurses visited him on their days off, she said.Mr. Stroum, an avid Husky football fan, put in 50-hour weeks in the business of philanthropy - sitting on boards, cutting civic deals and raising money.In 1982, when the Eastside Jewish Community Center faced bankruptcy, he led a campaign that pulled in $4.2 million in two months - prompting the center's board to rename it the Samuel and Althea Stroum Jewish Community Center.In 1990 he showed his clout working with Seafirst Chairman Richard Cooley to raise $340,000 in a week to balance the symphony budget, sweetening the pot with $100,000 of his own money before for putting the touch on others.He was considered a visionary, not a detail or numbers man, although he was eminently familiar with accounts and spreadsheets."Sam doesn't like to deal with numbers very often, but he is very capable of it," his investment manager, Harvey Gillis, told The Times in 1990."A lot of people look at their feet. Sam is always looking out at the horizon, out one, two or three years, asking, `Where is this thing going?' "In 1984, within days of talking with Michael Darland, founder of Digital Systems International - a Redmond telecommunications company - Mr. Stroum wrote him a check for $1.5 million. When the company went public with a successful initial public offering in 1990, the founders and early investors became multimillionaires.Estimates of several years ago placed Mr. Stroum's wealth at between $50 million and $100 million.One of seven children born in Boston to Russian immigrants, Mr. Stroum witnessed the failure of his father's furniture business and the slow death of his father from lung cancer."He saw what failure did, the consequences of failure," Stroum's sister, Gertrude Berman, once told The Times. So did his mother, who volunteered time for community causes while raising a big family.Jobs were scarce in 1939 when he graduated from high school in the Boston area, so he joined the Army Air Corps.But in the fall of 1941, months before the U.S. entered World War II, Mr. Stroum took a leave to attend a sister's wedding, and while he was gone, his squad shipped out to the Philippines. Mr. Stroum became a crew chief and flight engineer, and came to Seattle to ferry Boeing B-17 bombers throughout the nation.When he first arrived in Seattle, Mr. Stroum lived with the other aviators at the Sorrento Hotel. He met his future wife at the nearby Jewish USO center. They were married Aug. 9, 1942, and Mrs. Stroum paid for the $3 marriage license. They were the first couple married by Temple De Hirsch-Sinai's new rabbi Raphael Levine, who became one of Seattle's great religious leaders.Briefly living in Portland, he sold different items including auto parts.He settled in Seattle in the late 1940s and formed several sales companies to representing automotive- and radio-parts makers. In the mid-1950s he became an electronics distributor.He named his main company ALMAC/Stroum Electronics, combining the names of his wife, Althea, and his two daughters, Marsha and Cynthia.He also began distributing parts for Erna Jorgensen and Harry Schuck, who had founded Schuck's Auto Supply. In 1967, when the pair retired, Mr. Stroum bought their business with their help and oversaw expansion of the chain to seven stores.Stroum sold ALMAC in 1974 for some $2 million. He then made his first major charitable gift: $600,000 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. He sold Schuck's to Pay n' Save in 1984 for $70 million, beginning a new career of giving.Her father left incredibly large shoes to fill, said Cynthia Stroum."He was given a 90-day prognosis, and he lived 11 months," said Cynthia Stroum, whose experience with her father's battle with pancreatic cancer has led her to serve on the board of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network."He had such a passion for living that he didn't give up to the very end. He believed that he was given a gift, and I want to carry on that legacy."Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Althea Stroum; daughters Cynthia Stroum and Marsha S. Glazer; siblings Herman Stroum of Florida, Gertrude Berman of Florida and Joseph Stroum of Seattle; grandchildren Adam and Tamara Sloan of New York, Scott J. Sloan of Los Angeles and Courtney Stroum Meagher of Seattle.Services are at 2 p.m. today at Temple De Hirsch-Sinai, 1511 E. Pike St., Seattle.Donations may go to the Swedish Hospital Tumor Institute, the Stroum Jewish Community Center or the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN, P.O. Box 4809, Palos Verdes, CA 90274).Seattle Times staff reporter Keiko Morris contributed to this story.

WANT TO KNOW EVEN MORE?

Sorry, not today.

Egide Thein

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

And it is already tomorrow in Luxembourg. So here is that addendum:

Seattle-based investor new ambassador to Luxembourg

President Obama intends to name Cynthia Stroum, a Seattle-based investor and big donor to Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, D-Wash., as U.S. Ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. "Cynthia Stroum has been an angel investor in over 20 successful technology, biotechnology and retail start-up companies, including Starbucks Coffee Company," the White House said in a statement late Friday. In recent years, Stroum has contributed $10,000 to Cantwell and an equal amount to Murray, as well as making four-figure donations to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina. She gave to the successful 2006 campaign of Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana. Stroum was recently honored as a "Woman of Valor" at a closed-door Cantwell fundraising luncheon. The Luxembourg embassy has long been used to reward political donors, but also to break barriers. The country's most famous envoy to the Grand Duchy was Washington, D.C., "hostess with the mostest" Perle Mesta, a major capital social figure of the late 1940's and 1950's. During the Johnson Administration, Patricia Roberts Harris became the first African-American woman to serve as an ambassador. She later served as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Clinton Administration. Over loud objections from Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, meat packing heir James Hormel became in 1999 America's first openly gay ambassador sent to an overseas posting. The Grand Duchy, nestled between Belgium and Germany, is less than 1,000 square miles in size. It is, however, a longtime NATO member and an important host to European Union events. Stroum has both a business and show biz background. She made her Broadway debut in 2004 as producer of a production of A Raisin in the Sun, for which she earned a Tony nomination. She is a board member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Posted by
document.writeln(showE2("joelconnelly","seattlepi.com","Joel Connelly"))
Joel Connelly at September 12, 2009 3:00 p.m.Categories: campaign money, Democrats,National politics *** Now you have almost all I have. But dear Joel Connelly, why denigrate the prize Ms Stroum is getting with "less than 1,000 sqm and "HOWEVER" is member of NATO. You hurt her and my feelings. Say rather: "is more than 2,500 sqkm" . No one in the US can figure how big that is. And say: "is a founding member of NATO, the UN and of the European Union." If you are really nice, you add that Luxembourg produced four Tour de France winners. And we drank coffee before Starbucks.

Egide Thein