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V O L . X X V N O. X V I I A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9 30 "Academia was the family busi- ness," she says. "I was so lucky to grow up on a college campus. We'd go to plays, movies, 'Rocky Horror Picture Show,' basketball games." For college, she went to Harvard University, where she studied sociology, which helped her in her eventual journey into the world of nonprofits. While in college, she took a year off to work with Up With People, an international service-related nonprofit that moved her group of students around the world, from the U.S. to Belgium and Finland, among other European countries, then Russia. "It was right before the fall" of the USSR, she says. "It was an amazing time to be there." Her natural interest in people com- bined with a love of data gave her the foundation to pursue work in nonprofits after college. "It tapped into my natural personal- ity, what I enjoyed," she says. One of her first jobs was with Up With People, this time as a staffer. "We'd go to a new community and you'd have to get acclimated. ere'd be host families. ere were service proj- ects. What captivated me was the ser- vice side and the education side. In my family, there were always stories of other countries. I saw my parents, who had the desire, bravery and courage to go live in Africa … e international piece and the service piece came together" working for Up With People. After several years living out of a suitcase, "I got tired of not having a kitchen or a closet," she jokes. She briefly settled in Washington, D.C., working as a White House vol- unteer in the Clinton administration and then at the nonprofit KaBOOM, which builds playgrounds in commu- nities that cannot afford them. Around this time she met her future husband, Michael Schlax, who was earning a Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She moved to Madison and worked for two non- profits, including the United Way of Dane County, where she was campaign director. en they moved together to New York City, where she earned an MBA at Columbia University. Her now-husband worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J. Despite a now-growing resume in the nonprofit sector, in 2002 both she and her husband went to work for John Deere Co., she in strategic planning and business development and her husband in engineering. Over more than six years, they were sta- tioned in Moline, Ill.; Raleigh, N.C.; Zwiebrueken, Germany; and finally Des Moines, Iowa. Along the way, one daughter was born in North Carolina and the other in Germany. It was in Des Moines that she went to the director of the United Way of Central Iowa and offered her- self as a volunteer. She told the director she'd worked at United Way and had experience in strategic planning and fundraising, and expected to be placed in a volun- teer situation. C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 2 » Liz Cotter Schlax, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Portland, has taken a strategic approach in her five years there. P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY » C O N T I N U E D F RO M P R E V I O U S PA G E Academia was the family business. I was so lucky to grow up on a college campus. — Liz Cotter Schlax

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