The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture congratulates its Chairman, Tad Taube, on 32 years of leadership as Board President of the Koret Foundation.
Koret Foundation's Tad Taube giving up board presidency
By: Meredith May
Published 2:12 pm, Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tad Taube eagerly awaits the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Photo: Alex Washburn, The Chronicle.
After 32 years at the helm of one of the Bay Area's most generous philanthropic foundations, Tad Taube is stepping aside as board president of the Koret Foundation, so he can focus his energy on several new ventures.
Taube, 82, recently told his board of directors that he will not seek re-election in June, giving them time to find his replacement by the end of the year.
"I have a goal, to achieve a 40-hour workweek," Taube said. "I don't want to continue working more hours than my age, holding down five, six, seven jobs at once."
As a leader of four influential foundations - the Koret Foundation, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, the Taube Family Foundation and a donor-advised fund atStanford University - Taube has redirected a sizable portion of Bay Area wealth along with Taube's real estate fortune, to numerous artistic, athletic, civic and Jewish cultural institutions.
He describes his career change as a "sideways" move, enabling him to stay involved in many joint Taube Philanthropies/Koret ventures, while starting new ones.
He will spend more time in Poland, where world leaders will gather in late October for the grand opening of Taube's pet project, the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Since 2007, Taube and Koret have committed a combined $20 million to the museum, and during its construction, Polish leaders named Taube an honorary consul for the Republic of Poland in the Bay Area.
"We are going to establish educational ties between the museum and major universities: Stanford, USC, Brandeis, Moscow University," he said.
In the Bay Area, Taube will devote more time to mentoring several Silicon Valley medical startups, which involve the improvement of cancer detection; ways to measure blood loss during surgery; and a new way to remotely stimulate nerve cells to treat chronic pain. A fourth startup, Ecologic, has designed a new consumer container made of recycled paper with a fill-able pouch inside that can hold fluids from soda to laundry detergent.
"We are going to get rid of all these glass bottles and aluminum containers; this is totally organic," Taube said.
A big sports fan, Taube is also talking about forming a new professional basketball league that would play in the summer off-season, along the lines of a similar U.S. Football League that he helped start in 1983, with his Bay Area team, the Oakland Invaders. The league lasted for three spring/summer seasons.
"We learned a lot of lessons with that experiment; one, that I could survive the financial hit I took," he joked.
The U.S. Basketball League has a business plan, a budget, and is lining up arenas and a leader. If everything goes well, Taube said, the league could start as early as summer 2015, and would draw talented players from the college circuit who were never chosen for the NBA.
Taube will continue to be involved in many of the joint Taube Philanthropies/Koret Foundation ventures, including several newer ones that funnel money to youth programs each time the 49ers score a touchdown, or a Warriors player shoots a three-point basket.
He plans to spend more time with family, and on his hobbies: improving his golf game, photography, spending time in his garden, and around public policy tables.
Leaving the board presidency of Koret probably won't slow his pace; it will just reduce his commitment to public parties and galas and meetings, so he can do what he really loves: work, and get others to work with him.
"Tad's initiative and against-the-grain leadership has moved mountains more often than not," said California Gov. Jerry Brown.
