Kathryn Wasserman Davis

Kathryn Wasserman Davis (February 25, 1907 – April 23, 2013) was an American investor, painter, philanthropist, and political activist.

She was a longtime promoter of women's rights and planning parenthood.

She was committed to engaging local communities, particularly regarding the environment on the Hudson River and Maine coast, and also concerned with access to high-quality education.

At the age of 94, she began an artistic adventure, producing more than 200 paintings.

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on February 25, 1907, she said her first memory was of walking in a suffragette parade with her mother as they waved their yellow flags in support of equal rights for women.

During her time at a Friends school in Philadelphia, she became an incidental activist for peace, later serving as Secretary of the League for Peace and Freedom at Wellesley College.

For her senior year of high school, she attended the Madeira School.

As the only Jewish girl in school, she faced many instances of discrimination, yet still excelling academically.

Early in her career, Mrs. Davis worked for the Council on Foreign Relations and authored The Soviets at Geneva: The USSR and the League of Nations, 1919-1933. An alumna of Wellesley College, she earned a master's degree, in 1931, at Columbia University and, in 1934, a Ph.D. in international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

In 1929, she journeyed on horseback into the Caucasus Mountains with famed anthropologist Leslie White.

Physically, she led an active life—with early interests in skiing from the 1930s until she stopped in her mid-90s, a bicyclist throughout her life, a competitor on the tennis court until age 101, and equally so on the croquet field until age 105.

She adopted kayaking at age 95 and continued that for ten years.

She was swimming at age 106 just weeks before her death.

After her marriage to Shelby Cullom Davis on January 4, 1932, the couple began a career of financial investments, concentrating on the then-rising insurance industry, first, in the United States through opportunities provided by the Great Depression and, later, in the 1940s and 1950s, through expanding national and international investments, geared toward long-term growth.

After completing her doctoral work in international relations in 1934, she later, following World War II, became active in Planned Parenthood in the Tarrytown, New York, area, coordinating with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was then the national head.

From 1934 into 1935, she worked at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1937, she was, at age 30, a Pennsylvania member of the Committee for Suggested Improvement for the still-evolving Social Security Laws.

From 1940 into 1944, she was President of the National Council on Household Employment.

She was also among the early female members of the New York Stock Exchange.

In the 1950s and 1960s, as a busy mother, she focused her activities in the Tarrytown, New York, community, serving as chair of the Westchester Children's Association and foreign policy chair of the League of Women Voters.

In the 1950s, her husband was instrumental in creating the Davis Family of Mutual Funds.

The Wasserman family's philanthropic activity extended throughout Mrs. Davis' long life, building an (often anonymous) legacy of extraordinary generosity.

Much of her focus was on sustainable impact.

She moderated the risks she took through creating partnerships and building institutional capacity.

Typically, she started with smaller gifts and, as organizational capacity was proven, steadily raised it and then, often brought in new partners.

Her primary giving was through The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation and the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation.

Of all her philanthropy, she was most proud of her Projects for Peace.

Kathryn was married to businessman Shelby Cullom Davis, who developed the series of Davis investment instruments and later became the United States Ambassador to Switzerland, from 1969 until 1974.

In the 1970s through the 1990s, her interests turned actively international, with extensive travel, focused on ways of understanding and informing policy-making diplomacy.

In this effort, she drew on her education and experience in international relations and her expanding web of global friendships, as well as her own financial means.

Her husband died in 1994.

Her husband of 62 years, Shelby Cullom Davis, predeceased her in 1994.

Her children include one son, Shelby Davis (Shelby Moore Cullom), and two daughters, Diana Cullom Davis Spencer and Priscilla Alden Davis (deceased).

Following an eight-decade legacy in philanthropy, much of it anonymous, Davis launched her signature project on her 100th birthday, in 2007, when she committed $1,000,000 to fund 100 practical, student-led peace actions, each with a $10,000 grant, at selected institutions around the world.

This program, called Projects for Peace, has continued annually and expanded.

This initiative, created on her 100th birthday, launched 100 prizes of $10,000 each to student projects submitted on a competitive basis and built on tangible, local community means to foster peace.

In the ensuing years, nearly 1,000 ideas have been planted, many growing into sustained, locally rooted peace actions in a multitude of countries.

Davis celebrated her centenary in 2007 and died at her home in Hobe Sound, Florida, on April 23, 2013, at the age of 106 years old.

Kathryn Wasserman came from a family of strong Wellesley-educated women.

The Wasserman family were successful merchants in St. Louis in the middle of the 19th century, and Kathryn's father, Joseph Wasserman, moved to Philadelphia to develop the Art Loom Company.