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Photo courtesy of William Moody.
William Moody, hired in 1967, had a forty-year career at the RBF and worked in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe. He is pictured here in Kenya in the late 1970s.
The RBF began the 1960s with a full-time director, Dana Creel, and a staff of approximately eight associates. As the decade progressed, five new program officers joined the RBF staff: William S. Moody, Thomas Wahman, Gerald Davenport, Russell Phillips, and William M. Dietel. Although these new associates worked with family members as requested, the Fund was their priority, especially after the 1969 Tax Reform Act required the formal separation of family office and RBF activities and payroll. The new associates’ time, energy, fresh perspectives, and relative youth enabled the Fund to grow in new directions by the early 1970s. Their work led directly to the development of new initiatives including the Southern, Equal Rights and Opportunities, National Arts, Elementary Education, and Environmental programs. In the 1970s, RBF staff began increasingly to travel to the locations in which the Fund worked. The endowment gained from the 1961 bequest from John D. Rockefeller. Jr.’s estate also enabled these programmatic initiatives.
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Photo courtesy of William Moody.
In the late 1970s, RBF president William Dietel (left) paid a visit to the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation. AWLF wildlife management training programs were supported by the RBF beginning in 1964.
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Left to right: former RBF president William Dietel, Russell Phillips, William Moody, and former RBF president Colin Campbell at the Playhouse on the Kykuit estate in November 2012.
Browse the major events in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's history