OMC: What's the foundation's focus?

PB: We're still developing our mission areas. What happened was that we were doing a lot in Milwaukee and doing some things nationally, and the foundation was much smaller, and then my dad did this thing, that I call "the big bang."

OMC: Which everybody talks about…

PB: Right. Which was a year ago, so we suddenly got to be much bigger.

OMC: And that, for the readers who don't know, is that your father, Warren Buffett, gave each of the children …

PB: He gave each of the children a billion dollar foundation, individually.

OMC: Not a billion dollars to you the children.

PB: No, no, definitely not! Key distinction, most definitely!

OMC: He didn't hand you a billion dollars.

PB: Not at all. I take no salary from the foundation. We didn't get the money for sure. So, it's money to give away. Then he gave a huge amount, $31 billion, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

OMC: Right, which is the other thing everybody talks about.

PB: Yep. So, it was an amazing thing that he did, but it's a huge responsibility, obviously. So, first of all, we hired two people that we knew very well and trusted implicitly to be our executive director and a woman, Divinia Troughton, to be our head of Research and Grants. So Bob Dandrew came on as executive director, and he's really experienced in the philanthropic world, and said we've got to have a strategic plan here. We have to know how we're going to do it. We can't hire anyone until we know how we want to operate. Very important thinking before we just start throwing money out the door.

OMC: Is he a Milwaukee guy, or is he a New Yorker?

PB: He's a New York guy. He was my program officer for "Spirit: The Seventh Fire." He actually oversaw that show and that program for the Rudolph Steiner Foundation. So we really did know him quite well and worked closely with him. So, we have for the last year, and we're almost done, really, we've been talking to a lot of people, listening to a lot of people, learning a ton about what's going on out in the world, and how we want to operate and what we want to focus on. We know we have two very broad areas and of course the radio station came up before all of this happened, but it fits very nicely in our mission. One of them, and these are, like I said, very broad at this point.

Over the coming months, we're really going to drill down into what the specifics are. One of them is community building -- how to bring people together over various issues or around certain things and the station is a perfect example of that. You wouldn't necessarily think, "How could we potentially improve race relations, education -- a variety of issues in the community? Well, let's start a radio station. And let's have it be focused on music." Well, that doesn't seem to make sense until you start to see, hopefully in the next year or so, how the station starts to address local issues and bring them up, but not in a typical talk radio thing.

So, we're trying to find various ways of bringing that sort of thinking into the kind of work we do. Again, right now, very broad, kind up here stuff, and then we'll zero in how we do it.

OMC: So at the moment, the foundation is not really functioning yet as a foundation, more as planning for a future as a functioning foundation?

PB: Well, it's definitely planning for the future, but we will have disbursed probably $20 million this year. So we are actually doing stuff. A good example, because we didn't want to not do anything, a lot of them were ongoing, or a lot of them were smaller and got bigger, but the best example of what we're doing that encompasses everything we've talked about here is a project in West Africa. So we go in there with a partner organization, the International Rescue Committee, the IRC, very well respected, and we go into a region, West Africa, with a focus on Liberia. It's about educating returning refugees from this post-conflict setting, training teachers, rebuilding schools, all the things around education. And Liberia is run by the first woman President in Africa, and so you've got sort of the community aspect, the female aspect, you know, all this stuff, and we also want to be known in working in partnership with organizations that do great work. So, in other words, instead of…

OMC: You're not looking to go it alone.

PB: Right. We want to work with experts, and we're railing against what I call philanthropic colonialism. Where people go in and say, "We know how to solve your problem." When I went to Liberia, which was the first time I've been to Africa, a couple months ago, you really see what is ultimately really obvious, and that is, the people know the problems they have.

You know, you don't have to go in and tell them how to solve, or tell them "this is what's wrong," or "this is how you solve it," because they know the problems, and they know the solutions that are needed.

OMC: Which doesn't mean they have the resources to solve them.

PB: Right, you set the stage, and let the things happen that need to happen. We're really not only trying to figure out what to do, but how to do it. You know, really think about operating, and trying to change maybe some of the institutional thinking that's been around in the foundation of the world for a while.

OMC: You're not just saying that this is going to be in the United States, or somewhere else -- you're looking globally?

PB: Yep, and that's another thing. A lot of people say, well, are you going to work domestically or internationally, and I say, I'd rather find great solutions around big problems and see if we can help solve them, you know. So it will be wherever we find… ultimately, good leadership is sort of what it gets down to.

OMC: Is it, on a slightly different topic now, difficult to be a Buffett?

PB: Mmm-hmm. Like never before!

OMC: Do people have misconceptions about who you are and what you have? Do people treat you differently?

PB: It's funny, because, um, until we moved here, I never, it never really affected me. All the time in Milwaukee and before, I was doing the music, people thought well, "maybe he's related to Jimmy Buffett," but it just never seemed to be an issue. I was always kind of surprised when it came up as an issue.

OMC: Was that sort of a Milwaukee thing? Do you think they didn't care?

PB: I think it was, at least to some extent. Yeah, they didn't care; it wasn't something they thought about; I was doing the music and that's what I was known for. Since I came here … I called my dad in the first month or so and said, "This is crazy! You're like a rock star in this town, and I'm like a rock star's kid or something." It's like if your dad was a president, and you lived in Washington, former or current; because this is the financial capital of, essentially, the world.

OMC: So you're getting invites to parties?

PB: Oh man! We could be busy all the time.

OMC: Do you go to the parties?

PB: Well, occasionally. We really have to be careful because we ultimately know why we're invited, depending. And then, when my dad made the announcement, it took it to like, times a thousand.

OMC: Presumably The New York Times article didn't help that.

PB: Yeah, right, yeah. So it started with being weird just because I'd never really had the feeling of being so important before, and then, like I said, multiples of weird when the announcement came out, because then suddenly, people couldn't, sort of what you're saying, differentiate between me and my dad, and the billion dollars, and this whole thing. I mean, we were just in a negotiation for potentially buying an apartment, and we had to tell them, "Look, we are not what you think we may be." And the guys were great. They said, "We know the story, we get it. We understand that." We can't just go in and throw money all over the place. If I was 25, I think I'd be a mess, potentially, here, because you wouldn't know how to differentiate, and would get sort of seduced by it.

OMC: So you're very careful about it, you're leery about it.

PB: Definitely. I mean, again, within months, Jennifer turned to me and said, "Well, as long as we know that everybody wants something, we're fine." And sadly it's sort of true.

OMC: It's sort of like winning the lottery and all of the sudden the phone is ringing off the hook.

PB: We realized that even on the foundation level, if both of us show up at something, people think we're interested, because we're both showing up. And well, no, we both just wanted to come, and then you realize that you're sending some signal.

OMC: You're past the age where that's seductive.

PB: Right. Mostly. I have to say, occasionally, "Oh cool, we get to go to this party," or we get to meet somebody we normally wouldn't meet. I'd say instead of seductive, it's more fun, you know. If you have to pay a price on one side by being guarded and questioning people's motivations, you might as well win on the other side by occasionally meeting somebody fun or going to a party. On balance, I'd certainly take it, you know. It's not awful, but it is a little strange.

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Posted by MilwaukeeMan on July 11, 2007 at 1:34 p.m. (report)

Great interview. Peter, Jennifer and their family have done a great deal for Milwaukee. They lived here for years, way under the radar, giving, doing and making things happen. His thoughts on the City are great and even when he spoke at YPM/Fuel Milwaukee a few months ago I was surprised at how few knew that he was the son of the richest man in the world. Yet, as this interview does well, it show Peter has his own man. It will be fun to watch his Family Foundation truly change the world. Even more fun to know that he "started" in Milwaukee.