“It was the first time that I’d succeeded in what I thought was a big pond and it gave me the confidence to think I could do something major with my life.”
“I just feel such affection for the place,” Rosenkranz said. Rosenkranz graduated summa cum laude at the age of 19, as the youngest member of Yale’s class of 1962, and recalls how the college helped him “cobble together” tuition from loans, scholarships, and student jobs. “Private funding makes for a more competitive environment, where schools have to compete for funding, faculty, students, and reputation, and that fosters free-market competition, which makes things great here,” he said.īoth men were drawn to donate to Yale out of a sense of allegiance to the University. Ultimately, he praised a system in which private institutions like Yale and venture philanthropists work together. Rosenkranz’s gifts have enabled the University to develop new science and quantitative reasoning courses, construct Rosenkranz Hall, and develop its online learning platform. Rosenkranz described his philanthropic vision as “venture philanthropy,” approaching Yale with the financial means to enact “less obvious” educational initiatives. Rosenkranz is the CEO of Delphi Financial Group, while Francis has worked in both the private and the public sector, serving as the CFO of Ann Taylor Stores Corporation and, and in high-level administrative positions under New York Governors Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, and Andrew Cuomo. The two met many years ago by “total coincidence,” through the board of New York Uuniversity Law School. One afternoon last December, I ascended to the thirtieth floor offices of Delphi Financial, overlooking New York City, to sit down with the two sponsors of Yale’s Writer-in-Residence programs.įrancis happens to be friends with Robert Rosenkranz ’62, sponsor of the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence program. So the story goes, when the selection committee learned of Fadiman’s traveling mentorship, they knew immediately that Fadiman would fulfill Francis’s vision. Ultimately, it was Francis’s generosity that made the dinner possible, and it was his specific intention of endowing a “pastoral” professor that brought us Anne. Paul Francis ’77, sponsor of the Francis Writer-in-Residence Program, sat at a neighboring table, surrounded by alumni of the writing program that bears his name. One evening last November, I sat next to Anne Fadiman, sipping red wine and enjoying Mory’s famous Baker’s Soup, as Anne told our table of current and former students her famous “car service story.” When she first came to Yale to give a Master’s Tea, she invited a Yale graduate to travel with her in the hour-and-a-half ride back to her home in Whately, Massachusetts, in order to discuss the craft of editing.
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