James Jay Dudley Luce
A life spent uplifting the worst of humanity while celebrating the best, especially the young leaders who carry the work forward.
Jim Luce has spent his life at the meeting point of conscience and action, from Wall Street to the developing world, always returning to the same question: who will raise the next generation of leaders?
An early calling
In the 1980s Luce co-founded Fundamentalists Anonymous, and with the help of the Henry Luce Foundation raised $1.1 million to build support groups across the United States for those leaving fundamentalism. He testified before Congress on the subject. He then returned to Wall Street, working with Merrill Lynch in the World Financial Center, which he left shortly before September 11, 2001.
A father, and a mission
In 1995 Luce traveled to Indonesia, where he met the ten-month-old infant who would become his son, Mathew, living in a warehouse-like orphanage. His revulsion at the conditions of orphans in the developing world, and the influence of his child-psychologist mother, led him to conceptualize an alternative. He completed it by 1999 and used the proceeds of his mother’s estate to found Orphans International Worldwide. He has since raised more than $1.5 million for orphaned children across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and was awarded the Certificate of Congressional Recognition in 2004 and again in 2007. Mathew now serves on the Foundation’s board.
A writer and advocate
Luce writes on thought leaders and global citizens for outlets including the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos, wrote the lead story in the philanthropy section of The New York Times in 2007, and has reported on his experiences in Haiti for the BBC. He holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from the College of Wooster and studied at Waseda University in Tokyo and in Bogotá, carrying Waseda’s motto with him: gensei wo wasurenu, “not forgetting the real world.”
A family of service
Jim is the son of Frances Dudley Alleman-Luce, a child psychologist, and Stanford Leonard Luce, a professor of French. He descends from a distinguished American family that includes Governor Thomas Dudley, third governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a co-founder of Harvard University, and Rear Admiral Stephen Bleecker Luce, founder of the United States Naval War College. It is a lineage of stewardship, and one he has spent his life continuing.
