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Doris McNamara's Legacy to the Business School
August 24, 2000
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Doris Ersted McNamara appeared on the doorstep of the Business School in the early eighties asking what women needed if more of them were to be successful business leaders. "That was a radical question at the Business School then and may still be radical in society generally, " says University psychologist Larraine Zappert, who was called upon in 1982 to help answer McNamara's question because she counseled students."
McNamara had no formal connections to the School, but she had been one of some half dozen women business undergraduates at the University of Minnesota in the 1920s. Her education helped her become a highly successful investor, turning her Depression-era salary savings into a comfortable nest egg before she and her husband moved to the Bay Area.
McNamara died this May in Palo Alto at the age of 93, leaving a legion of thankful Business School alumnae, faculty, and staff for her many contributions, including fellowships with a preference for women students who had been out of school for several years, financial support for younger faculty and a student support network that allows women students to get together in small groups with a facilitator weekly, where they discuss issues that affect women differently than men.
In appreciation of her efforts, the School created the Doris McNamara Endowed Fund for Women in 1994, which supplies the dean with discretionary resources for the recruitment and development of women faculty and supports research and case writing on issues of particular concern to women and minorities, as well as continuing the support groups.
"She was one of the pioneers who helped us with the keenness of her questions," says Zappert, now director of the University's Sexual Harassment Policy Office "Through the years that Doris was involved with the School, she continued to ask, 'What do you want and why?"
