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Sara Miller McCune
Presentation to the SB Council for Self-teem-06/06/08
The Introduction
By Dennis Forster
Our guest speaker today is Sara Miller McCune, publisher and chairman of SAGE Publications…a company she founded in 1965. She served as President and Publisher for eighteen years, and continues to serve as Chairman and Publisher to date. SAGE continues to grow internally and through acquisitions on an international level.
Sara is also President of the McCune Foundation, based in Montecito which supports projects internationally. A current project is focusing on education and other opportunities for the poor and under served in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She is a member of the Board of the University of California, the Santa Barbara Foundation Board of Trustees and UCSB’s Chancellor’s Council. She is also a board member of the Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts and currently serves as its Chief Financial Officer.
Among other awards, she was recognized as the “1998 Philanthropist of the Year for Santa Barbara County” by the National Society of Fundraising Executives in May of 2002.
Sara’s list of accomplishments is long and continues to grow as she actively makes a difference in the world. She is here to tell us how strong self-esteem was a factor in her journey as a business woman and philanthropist.
Please give a warm welcome to Sara Miller McCune.
The following wrap-up is by Betty Hatch
Even before her introduction, the striking woman sat relaxed. She greeted and chatted with friends who approached the stage to welcome her. Each time I went to fill her in on the status of the microphone, which stopped working when we tested it, Sara Miller McCune smiled with a twinkle in her bright brown eyes.
“Don’t worry; there are always problems with electrical equipment.” If we can’t get it fixed, I’ll just use a louder voice” was her prompt reply. She not only appeared relaxed; she was comfortable and at home in the middle of the stage while the audience arrived.
Settled in a plush office chair, with a small table of flowers and a few notes beside her, Sara began her speech stating confidently, “You ask me to tell you where my self-esteem came from; I have always had it!”
She explained that everyone in her family—mother, father, grandparents, aunts and uncles all told her, “You can do just about anything. And she did—especially things she liked doing.” Sara likes doing “everything.” Among the things she mentioned were: reading, dancing, seeing plays, performing (in the United States and in England), public speaking, speaking with foreign accents, acting professionally, cooking, entertaining and working! Her work has given her “great joy for more than 40 years.”
Here are Sara’s Rules of the Road:
Sara said learning self-esteem is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. In that we are our own judge and jury,”we must learn to love ourselves and be grateful for ourselves—our strengths, hopes, achievements; we must understand our weaknesses and decide when we want to “develop a change strategy.” To accent the importance of self-esteem, Sara quoted the Jewish sage, Rabi Hillel, who said:
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
Prepare yourself:
“When you are ready to work, work hard and work smart.”
Since Sara loves to do everything, she gave us a chronological feel for some of her multitude of activities in a writer’s format and a professional speaker’s delivery:
- From the age of 9 through 13, she worked at summer camps.
- At the age of 10 Sara began tap dance training; at 13 she did vaudeville routines for vets; at15 she played the lead role in an off-Broadway production.
- At 16 she won a New York Regents Scholarship, which enabled her to attend the college of her choice, Queen’s College of the City University of N.Y.
- At 19, Sara was International President of B’nai B’rith Girls. During her senior year, she served as President of two national youth organizations. Four months after her 20th year she graduated and worked for the summer at Camp B’nai B’rith in the Poconos.
- At the end of the summer, this very versatile achiever became a gofer for the publisher at MacMillan Publishing in New York. She left the states for England in 1963 and worked for Robert Maxwell, a Jewish man, without a college education, who spoke 9 languages and fathered 9 children. He was a great mentor to Sara.
- One month before she turned 25, Sara returned to New York and started Sage Publications in Manhattan! She derived the name by combining the first two letters of her first name and the first two letters of her soon-to-be- husband George’s name which made the very appropriate title of Sage Publications.
- Sara then moved the business to Beverly Hills in June of 1966 and in October, she married George D. McCune. Immediately Sara became a stepmother of 4 and in due course, a grandmother of 4 and a great-grandmother of 2!
- At the age of 54 Mrs. McCune co-founded McCune Foundation; within 3 months she became a widow, in charge of an 81/2 year old grandson and helping her daughter-in-law and her oldest step-son fight a nine year battle with cancer.
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Sara chats with W Mitchell, international speaker and author of "IT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENS To YOU, 'IT'S WHAT YOU DO ABOUT IT |
She is still involved politically; she is an avid reader, who loves to travel and donates magnanimously to many organizations. She mentioned 3 other close friends, Harriet Miller, Leni Fe Bland, and Michael Towbes who join her in major philanthropic giving in Santa Barbara saying that, if we are lucky, we will also be happy, productive, and busy and still learning to the age of 76 and perhaps beyond.
“We are all blind until we see
That in the human Plan,
Nothing is worth the building if it doth not build the man.
Why Build these Cities Glorious?
If we unbuilded go—
In vain you build the world unless
The Builder ALSO grows!”
Still on Sara’s to-do list are: Writing 2 or 3 books, house-training her Maltese puppy; more travel; a celebration of SAGE’s 45th birthday in 1 ½ years; and seeing the payroll increase globally from 900 to 1,000!
Our speaker, who likes to do everything, has not only accomplished most of her goals, she has also experienced much of the pain life can give. She is an expert at handling the bad as well as the good with equanimity and grace. We honor, Sara Miller McCune, a model of high self-esteem!
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