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Winter 2002

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PROFILE: SETTING A COURSE

by John Stifler '92G




	MADAME AMBASSADOR: Cynthia Shepard Perry '72G

CYNTHIA SHEPARD PERRY WAS A school girl in Lost Creek, Indiana, when she de-cided to grow up to be ambassador to Kenya. She got the ambassador part right, and Kenya was close. In 1986, President Reagan appointed Perry U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone. When she finished her three-year tour in that East African nation, she accepted an ambassadorship to Burundi under President George Bush Sr.

Perry has since served as chief of education and human resources in the African Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development. She is honorary consul general of the nation of Senegal. In July of last year she was appointed U.S. director of the African Development Bank.
One day last October, Perry, who received her doctorate from the UMass School of Education in 1972, told her story to UMass students in a Globalization and Governance course taught by political science professor Peter Haas. On campus as an Eleanor Bateman Visiting Scholar and keynote speaker of the School of Ed’s “Marathon Conference” honoring former dean Dwight Allen (see story, page 38) Perry held the class spellbound with her velvet voice, stately demeanor, and gift for storytelling.

“Growing up in Indiana, I was nowhere near any ocean that could make me think of being an ambassador to another country,” she said. “Yet at 16, I decided to be one. Why? Because I was a reader.” A reader and a scholar: Although Perry spent her early adulthood raising a family, by 1968, when Allen recruited her as a graduate student at UMass, she had already set the course that would lead her to a position of extraordinary influence on economic and social development in Africa.

AS PERRY TELLS THE STORY in her memoir, All Things Being Equal, and as she recounted it last fall at UMass, she was pregnant with her fourth child when, with the help of her former high school principal, she formulated a 25-year plan. The elements of the plan were a B.A. in political science; a master’s in English; a doctorate in international studies; high-level employment, active political party affiliation, and government service in Washington.

The plan worked – or rather, she worked the plan. Taking each step in turn, Perry earned her first two degrees at Indiana State and marched straight on to UMass. “When I came to Amherst,” she recalls, “I thought it was the finest little town I had ever seen in my life. A page out of history.” She loved how trusting everyone seemed. “We ordered furniture that was delivered before I had received my stipend,” she says. “They said, ‘That’s all right. Pay us when you get it.’”

Returning to Amherst last fall with the courtly grace of a retired statesperson, Perry made it clear that retirement was not part of her plan. In a panel on key issues in education, she spoke softly but forcefully of the complexities of educational planning in developing countries. In many cases, she argued, assistance from outside nations and organizations serves to maintain rather than eradicate the inequality of women.

“We have to look at the taboos that keep people from learning,” she said.

“There are women in Africa who are ready to move, but are held back by men.”
Educators “have a job ahead of them,” she said.

PERRY'S OWN NEWEST JOB IS Executive Director of the African Development Bank, which, from its headquarters in the Ivory Coast, makes loans to developing countries on the continent. The position is a powerful one, she says, so she is hopeful about her ability to make real change. Yet she is cautious, because she sees a great deal of mistrust in Africa of money from the United States – even though the bank was founded by African nations themselves, and though its leading donor nation is not the U.S. (which is second), but Nigeria.

“If I give $20 million to support micro-lending projects, after five years perhaps only $2 million has been used,” she said. “The excuse for not using the rest of it will be that they don’t want it!”
So-called micro-lending – small start-up loans to individuals and small groups – are a special interest of Perry’s. Many such loans assist women.

“And I’m not talking about women carrying bananas on their heads,” she says, “although that’s what some of the micro-lending is at the level of. When you eventually see a preponderance of these kinds of businesses, and you see more women with businesses operating in their own names, and you see them included in the stock exchange listings, then you’ll see a country’s economy grow.”

In the course of her long career Perry has campaigned for high-ranking politicians (yes, she’s a Republican), and trained teachers of inner-city children in Worcester and teachers for the Peace Corps. She’s flown reconnaissance missions to observe Russian trawlers illegally taking fish from the national waters of Sierra Leone, and accompanied President Joseph Momoh of that nation on his visit to the Gullah-speaking people of the South Carolina sea islands. She has jumped off a four-story building during an emergency drill, pursued a significant avocation as a painter, and joined her husband, J.O. Perry – “my prince consort,” she has called him in print – in raising a large and handsome family.

Her life can hardly be summed up in a phrase, perhaps in words at all, but a comment about what impressed her when she came to UMass is apt. Hearing Dwight Allen speak about a new kind of school of education, she recalls, she was struck by his “most expansive knowledge of what the world might be.”

[top of page]

UMass Gatherings: Ed Marathon

GATHERINGS: larger images

MARATHON LIST: Ed School Alumni at the Reunion

SOUVENIR: testing into Mass Aggie

PROFILE: Cynthia Shepard Perry '72G

PROFILE: Kathleen Mitchell ‘79

MEMOIR: Todd Russell Hill ’90

MONUMENTAL TEACHERS: your memories of professors

MOVING ON: faculty retirements

NO PLACE LIKE HOMECOMING: alumni at the ’70s reunions

UMASS MEDIA: Bruce MacCombie ’67, ’68G and Taj Mahal ’63S