Q&A with Janet Atkins - Olmsted Network (original) (raw)

Janet Atkins, our newest board member and the founder and CEO of Ridgeway Philanthropy LLC, shares her passion for Olmsted with us in this brief interview.

Olmsted Network October 22, 2024

Janet Atkins, our newest board member, introduced keynote speaker Sara Zewde at this year’s annual conference in the Hudson River Valley.

The Olmsted Network is excited to welcome Janet Atkins to our board of directors. Atkins is recognized in the philanthropic community for her expertise advising and helping organizations develop strategic and values-based methods of charitable giving. She recently retired from 15 years on the board of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

Like Olmsted, Atkins thinks and plans generationally. She comes to the Olmsted Network at a critical time as our nation and world face environmental and civic challenges analogous to those Olmsted faced.

1. As the CEO of Ridgeway Philanthropy, Inc. you help families and organizations “develop strategic and values-based outcomes” employing “structures to ensure smooth transition from generation to generation.” How will your work inform your service on the Olmsted Network board?
   Some of the largest gifts I have been part of begin with the idea of one member of the family. However, I have found that those gifts have staying power when more than one generation takes ownership of them and sees them as family legacy gifts. This is especially true when we want those gifts to have transformative power, to affect an institution for many generations to come. I am sort of a long-view person, so what we do today needs to have an impact for years to come. I consider Olmsted’s work to have extraordinary staying power. We need to think about how we support and steward those places for generations, and how we connect them to the present. As we see the effects of climate change, poverty in urban areas, over-development and the increasing land grab for pristine parks for the benefit of a few, it is even more important for the Olmsted Network to find families and individuals willing to partner for decades and generations of support going forward. We have a bully pulpit and should not be afraid to use it.
2. As a long-term, multi-generational planner, how does Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy inspire you?
   I have been a student of Olmsted for years. My mother introduced me to his work and principles. I have studied most of his work and spent time in the archives. I find Tony Horwitz’s book “Spying on the South: An Odyssey across the American Divide” incredibly fascinating. Not only is it a splendid read, tracing Olmsted’s trek through the South prior to the Civil War, but it speaks loudly to our present and the democratic principles Olmsted believed in and how they can be seen as we consider our parks and parkways. He was a progressive, a visionary, a man driven to shape and re-shape how America looks at its connection to the urban plan. He used parks and green spaces in the pursuit of democratic equality and equity for all. Who would not be inspired by this?
3. You recently completed a term with Boston’s Emerald Necklace Conservancy. What did you learn about Olmsted’s park system during your tenure that you did not know before you joined?
   I spent over 15 years on that Board and remain committed to its mission. The Necklace is one of the first examples of green infrastructure in America. Because it is so genius, most of us think it as a natural outcropping, that this just somehow happened. We must not let it go unnoticed, though. The Necklace must be celebrated. We have so much more to do, to build, inspire and aid in our shared resilient future. If you look carefully, you will see the true REVEAL Olmsted had in mind for the Necklace— from flood abatement to intentional tree planting to the generational creation of spaces. The necklace is vital to Boston— its health, its well-being, our civility and our encounters with one another.
   Boston, like many other cities, is vulnerable to water. The Necklace teaches us a lot about how to make water our partner, not our enemy. We must make significant investments in resilient systems, now and in the future, to manage away from what will be the destructive aftermath of flooding. We cannot wait for a disaster to hit Boston. Parks, new and old, and the Necklace are part of that solution.
   I think the most important things I learned from my tenure on the Board of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy is to be open to collaborations that on the outside look tough to accomplish, but with the right type of governance or MOU, can multiple the effects of the collaboration: 1 + 1 + 1 = 8. We became well known for those. And it taught me that the long view is critically important for the long-term health of our parks. Planting trees for generations forward. Considering how we treat invasives and understory. How we endow now for years when there will not be public support.
4. Do you have a favorite stretch of Boston’s Emerald Necklace?
   Oh, don’t make me choose. The Necklace is brilliant. It serves as a front yard or back yard for neighborhoods that have little green space. It envelops cultural institutions like the Gardner and the Museum of Fine Arts, giving them skirts and skirts of lush green and trees. It has ball fields, walking paths, water scenes, viewscapes that are impossible to describe. Each part could be seen as unique, but it is the integration of them all that is the genius.
5. Elevator pitch time: In a couple of sentences, explain why Olmsted’s parks and principles remain important now.
   I am devoted to Olmsted. He had no formal design training and didn’t commit to landscape architecture until he was 44. Before that, he was a New York Times correspondent to the Confederate states, the manager of a California gold mine and the General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. By the time he began as a landscape architect, Olmsted had developed a clear set of social values that gave purpose to his work. He said words matter.We must seek and speak the truth. He said stand for something.He wasn’t just making pretty green spaces; he was democratizing nature. He was into sustainable design and environmental conservation long before it was in vogue. And, he said: “The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.” We should all take these words to heart and, especially today, try to live by them. I find those, more than ever, to be important principles today.