2010 Alumni Award Winners

Features — By Laura Browne on November 3, 2010

By Erin Carlyle
photo by Kris Davidson

In April, Jim DeMartini (BS 74) dined at Oxford with 250 of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs. He listened as the woman next to him, Dorothy Stoneman, described 25 years spent helping youth in Harlem stay in school.

“I walked away incredibly impressed with the perseverance it has taken for her to pursue this,” DeMartini says.

Though DeMartini lives in the Bay Area, he has a big impact on those New York City kids. DeMartini is a board member of the Skoll Foundation — former eBay executive Jeffrey Skoll’s far-reaching charity — which funds Stoneman’s work. The pair chatted this April as part of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreunership, a massive brain convention for 800 of the brightest thinkers on social change.

“You just walk away with a warm glow that there are a lot of other like-minded people out there,” DeMartini says.

The managing partner of Bay Area-based Seiler LLP, DeMartini advises high net-worth people on matters as technical as estate tax planning and as philosophical as how to make an impact through charitable giving.

His sweeping expertise inspires some clients to affectionately refer to him as “consigliere” — the term for the mafia boss’s most trusted confidant in the American mafia, made famous by the Godfather films. DeMartini chuckles at his Hollywood-inspired moniker. “It’s the key advisor — the most trusted advisor to the family,” he says.

When DeMartini started college at UCLA, he wasn’t planning to become this kind of advisor. He wanted to be a doctor. But when a series of personal circumstances sent him home to the Bay Area after his freshman year, DeMartini’s father suggested accounting.

“The way I think about philanthropy is it’s an entrepreneurial way we can make an impact,” DeMartini says.

“It seemed like a natural launching pad to get into business,” DeMartini says.

DeMartini went to GGU at night. He spent days at a company that made sand-blasting equipment for airplanes. After classes, he zipped down to a Belmont ski shop to mount bindings and wax skis until midnight. On weekends, he recorded programming at a TV station, deleting the commercials so that the shows could be re-broadcast in Guam.

GGU provided DeMartini with exactly what he wanted: the opportunity to work full time and finish his degree in four years. It also came with a benefit he didn’t realize GGU was known for.

“We were being taught by guys who were practicing every day,” he says. “They took the academic part of it and infused real life into it. That, in the education world, is very different from what you normally get.”

DeMartini interviewed with the Big 8 firms, but felt his contribution would be lost in a large organization. “I decided I wanted to work where I had an impact on my own firm,” he says.

A job posting at Golden Gate’s career center led him to Don Seiler, proprietor of a six-person accounting firm. DeMartini turned out to be just the junior accountant Seiler wanted.

In March 1974, DeMartini married his wife, Linda, whom he met in a business law class at GGU. Three months later, he started his career at Seiler. “I was quite pleased to be paid $900 a month,” he laughs.

He quickly moved through the ranks, making partner by age 29. Seven years later, he joined the management committee, and in 1999, DeMartini became the managing partner of Seiler LLP.

Today, the firm has 15 partners and employs 150 people. Seiler provides a full range of accounting and estate tax planning services and has offices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The firm serves as the internal CFO for people in high-tech businesses. “We’ll do everything — other than we require them to have their own personal assistants: We’re not worrying about the laundry.”

But the cornerstone of Seiler’s work is providing services to very wealthy individuals and their families — which often includes family businesses and foundations. This line of work grew with the Bay Area’s economy: As real estate tycoons and department store captains made their millions, Seiler expanded services to respond to their changing needs. “You learned the planning for that wealth throughout the course of almost a life experience — you could learn with them, if you paid attention,” DeMartini says.

In his role as “consigliere,” DeMartini’s conversations with his clients are wide-ranging. “I’m consulted on lots of things that have little or nothing to do with income tax,” he says. “How should we think about leaving wealth to our children? How should we think about educating our children about the wealth we’re going to leave?”

DeMartini has sent some 50 employees to Golden Gate’s graduate program in taxation — he even set the firm’s tuition reimbursement rate at exactly the program cost. “I really think the graduate tax education at Golden Gate is the gold standard,” he says. “It’s outstanding — it’s the best there is.”

DeMartini has helped his firm foster a culture of giving: Seiler employees are expected to be involved in philanthropic organizations. “We still operate the firm like a family, and we care about their families,” he says.

DeMartini has been involved in philanthropy for years. He was a longtime trustee at the College of Belmont and chaired the advisory board of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur of California.

He also started a non-competitive baseball league for Bay Area kids. “I wanted to create an environment where kids could learn, where it’s more of a learning exercise rather than a who-won-the-game exercise,” he says. Today, 1,800 kids from 16 cities play in the league.

DeMartini serves on the board of the Stupski Foundation, a charity working to transform public schools. Founded by Larry and Joyce Stupski, the foundation seeks to improve life for children of color and poverty.

“I am very committed to ensuring education is provided to the kids who don’t have the same opportunities as the kids who live in Palo Alto,” DeMartini says.

DeMartini is grateful that his accounting career has provided him the opportunity to serve his community. “I think everybody has a responsibility to give back when they’re fortunate.”

After Tad Taube graduated from Stanford University with degrees in engineering, he became a successful real estate investor and developer. In 1965, Joseph and Stephanie Koret entered his life. The Korets had just completed a successful public offering of their women’s apparel company, Koret of California, and they wanted to invest their public offering proceeds in real estate.

“That started a relationship that continued the rest of their lifetime,” Taube says. “We had not only a business relationship, but that evolved into a very close personal relationship.”

All were Jewish immigrants — Taube from Poland, Joe from Odessa, and Stephanie from Romania — who found success in the United States and shared the desire to give back to their community.

“If our money doesn’t have impact, there’s no point in giving it out,” Taube says.

In 1973, when Koret of California fell into serious financial difficulties, the Korets turned to Taube to become its president and CEO to salvage their battered company. Taube refocused the Koret apparel conglomerate on its core business under his revamped management team and steered the company to a lucrative sale to Levi Strauss in 1979.

Taube convinced the Korets — who were childless — to leave their estate to charity via a newly formed Koret Foundation. Stephanie died in 1978 after a long illness. In 1980, Joe Koret married his second wife Susan, whom he brought onto the Koret Foundation Board. He died in 1982.

Today, Susan Koret chairs a distinguished Board of Directors which oversees the Foundation’s grantmaking in the Bay Area community and Israel. As president, Taube has steered the growth of the Koret endowment to $400 million while greatly expanding its reach and its impact. Taube and his family founded Taube Philanthropies which has often collaborated with Koret Foundation in support of projects of interest to both foundations. In recent years, the Koret and Taube Foundations have made grants to Bay Area communities, organizations and universities in Israel, and Jewish cultural projects in Poland in the aggregate amount of some $40 million annually.

Jeff Farber joined Koret in 2005 as CEO. Taube credits Farber with enhancing the Foundation’s impact. “If our money doesn’t have impact, there’s no point in giving it out,” Taube says. “Jeff fully understands and appreciates that impact and imparts such understanding to Koret’s grantmaking staff.”

GGU received a $500,000 grant from the Koret Foundation, which was used for its recent building renovations. “Education is one of the main areas of interest for the Koret Foundation, and from the standpoint of our board, GGU performs an extraordinarily valuable function,” Taube says.

Specifically, the foundation appreciates GGU’s ability to reach students through night classes and online work — aspects that appeal to people like the Korets and Taube, who themselves as immigrants came from modest circumstances.

When she thought her publishing company was sold, Marie Galanti (JD ’03) figured she’d do what she’d always intended: go to law school.

She had already accomplished a lot. She’d left Canada to pursue a PhD in French civilization from the University of Kansas, taught French for three years at San Francisco State University, and been a successful publisher.

In 1976, Galanti purchased Journal Francais, a French language publication based in San Francisco. A few years later, she and an associate added an English-language magazine, France Today, and the business thrived. “I loved being involved with publications, I loved being a journalist, I loved the business aspect to it,” she says.

During the boom years of the late 90s, a leading French newspaper publisher made an offer to buy the company — but the deal fell through — and Galanti ended up going to GGU while running her business.

“Golden Gate University is very much the kind of university that attracts people like myself, who’ve done different things and are able to just jump into law school, enjoy their studies, and take on whatever happens,” she says.

“I didn’t have a clue what I’d end up doing,” says Galanti, “but looking back I’m not terribly surprised.”

Galanti graduated from GGU in 2003, opened a law office in 2004 and sold her business in 2005.

She quickly found a practice niche: estate planning and international transactions. Her French-speaking contacts formed a natural client base. “Because of my age, people assumed that I had practiced law before, and I’d been in business for a number of years, and that I’d gone back to the practice of law,” she laughs. “At some point I had to own up to the fact that I was less experienced than they had assumed.”

Evidently, her contacts had faith: Galanti’s business grew. Now, she’s helping one couple emigrate to France, another sell property inherited from a French citizen and a third buy an apartment in southern France. Her clients live all over the world and often seek her help after unsuccessfully attempting these complex matters alone.

They aren’t the only ones who steer clear of international transactions.

“The reason that I’ve been able to grow a practice is many, many American attorneys and CPAs shy away from all the international stuff,” Galanti says, adding with a laugh, “It’s foreign!”

Growing up, Patricia Davis (MS ‘84) thought her mother, Mimi, was incredibly stingy. (Patricia’s father died when she was a young teen.) Mimi doled out an allowance to her brood every two weeks. If they ran out early, too bad — no more money.

“We thought she was mean,” Davis recalls.

But today, Davis uses many of her mother’s principles — plus knowledge gained from her long career in finance — to teach underprivileged people to make smart choices about money.

Davis majored in math and statistics at Howard University, then, after graduation, married her high school sweetheart to whom she is still married today. His career took them away from their native Washington, DC, to California.

Davis enrolled at Stanford Business School. She was so intimidated that she spent the summer before school began reading her first semester’s books. It paid off: She was a top student. Then a vicious auto accident broke her neck and pelvis and nearly took her life. The dean suggested Davis take a year off. Instead, she graduated with an MBA from Stanford Business School, on time and fourth in her class — the first minority in the school’s then 50-year history to graduate with honors.

After a lifetime career in finance, Patricia Davis turned to her true passion: teaching low income people to make smart money choices.

Davis was a White House Fellow and a Federal Reserve economist before returning to California to be director of finance for a mortgage insurance company. This job required knowledge of financial planning, and Davis felt unprepared. So she enrolled in GGU’s master’s program in Personal Financial Planning, winning the Top Student award.

“Golden Gate had the right mix of classes,” she says “and the timing of classes was perfect. It is a wonderful institution for people who are working and need very flexible class schedules.”

Davis became a vice president of Bank of America in San Francisco. Then, in 1989, Davis and her husband moved back to DC. She worked as director of treasury services at MCI, and in banking for years, serving as senior vice president of wealth management at Allfirst Bank in DC (now M&T Bank). In 2003, a buy-out of her company led her to pursue her passion. Now, Davis conducts hundreds of personal finance seminars each year and does individual financial counseling.

“I always start off with understanding your own financial value system,” she says. “What do you think about money; why do you think that way about money; and where do those thoughts come from?”

Davis summed up her mother’s timeless financial wisdom in her recently published book, “Mimi, Money and Me.” A charter school in DC uses it in the classroom, and Davis recently launched a nonprofit to fund her efforts.

“I’ve made myself a kind of one-person crusade to teach as many people — wherever I am — about the fundamentals of money management.”

Robert Calhoun did not really like being a student at Yale Law School. His professors taught with “almost sadistic use of the Socratic method,” he recalls. So Calhoun was quite surprised to discover that he actually liked practicing law in his first job at the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office.

“In the back of my mind I thought I would really like to teach,” Calhoun says. “I kept thinking that there must have been a better way to do it, and I’d like to try it.” So in 1974 when UC Hastings offered him a position — five days before the start of the semester — Calhoun jumped at the chance.

“Some days I felt I was only a few pages ahead of the students,” he laughs. “I found that I really enjoyed teaching — ironically, I guess, because I didn’t particularly enjoy being a
law student.”

The next year, Golden Gate offered Calhoun a tenure-track position teaching evidence and criminal procedure. He loved GGU. The faculty and students were very engaged with the issues of the time. The dean at the time, Judy McKelvey, was only the second woman dean to head an ABA-accredited law school.

“The emphasis on classroom teaching,” he says, “was particularly refreshing.”

Many GGU students, like Calhoun, were the first in their families to go to college. “Our dean has pointed to that and said people like that tend to come with less of a sense of entitlement, and I think that’s true. I think that’s what makes them fun to teach.”

“Our Bar pass rate doubled in just two years; we were removed from ABA probation,” Calhoun says.

In 1986, Calhoun took a leave to create the First District Appellate Project — a nonprofit that administers the appointed counsel system for the California Court of Appeals.

Five years later, he returned to teaching full-time. He launched a summer program in comparative law in Istanbul, where he was stationed in the Peace Corps prior to law school. He also helped in the early implementation of the Honors Lawyering Program. Calhoun was the associate dean for academic affairs from 2006 to 2008. It was a difficult time because the Law School was struggling to overcome a low Bar pass rate and the probation that resulted. “In many ways, the school really pulled things together,” recalls Calhoun. “Our Bar pass rate doubled in just two years; we were removed from ABA probation; and we set the groundwork for the school’s current upward arc.”

When the dean position at Golden Gate opened up, Calhoun called an old friend from Yale: Drucilla Stender Ramey, who eventually became the dean of the School of Law. “She is a force of nature who has been just fantastic for the law school,” he says.

Over the years, GGU law students have selected Calhoun for the Outstanding Teacher Award 14 times.

“It’s a wonderful honor, particularly because it comes from the students,” he says, “I can’t think of a better way to be acknowledged for what you do.”

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