When Stephen B. Heintz retires next year as president and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, it will mark the end of 25 years helming the $1.2 billion Rockefeller family philanthropic foundation.
RBF operates the Pocantico Center, the family’s former 216-acre Tarrytown estate, through an arrangement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the property. The campus is home to
Kykuit, the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center and the Marcel Breuer House.
Heintz co-chaired the committee whose bipartisan report, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century, made recommendations including Supreme Court term limits, campaign finance reform and making voting more accessible,
Heintz and his wife, Lise Stone, live in Dobbs Ferry, where Stone, a journalist and speechwriter. teaches ESL at the library.
Here’s a Q&A with Heintz, which has been condensed for brevity.
River Journal: RBF has shown its commitment to the arts through the Pocantico Center. What effect will funding cuts to organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts have?
Stephen Heintz: I think it’s tragic. It’s very short-sighted to be cutting funds for the arts and humanities that are such a small percentage of the federal budget compared to the very big-ticket items we should be focused on. The arts and culture in general are so enriching and they provide inspiration, they provide joy, they are part of the glue that keeps the fabric of society together.
And philanthropy, try as it will to make up some of the slack, is not going to be able to fill the entire gap, we just don’t have the capacity. We are spending more than we normally would because we are in a period of enormous turbulence and that requires us to do as much as we can.
RJ: You were instrumental in RBF’s decision to divest from fossil fuels. What is your reaction to the current administration’s pivot toward oil and coal?
Heintz: We are in a genuinely existential crisis in regard to climate change. This is a phenomenon that threatens the vitality of the very planet we depend on for our lives and livelihoods and as we see every year as the temperatures continue to rise, we see more devastating forest fires, we see more flooding, we see more violent hurricanes. The cost of those events is in the billions and billions of dollars.
So the climate crisis is not just an environmental concern, it’s a much broader concern, and so stepping back from the actions that we know reduce the greenhouse gasses that drive the global temperatures is an extremely short-sighted approach that is going to increase the cost of climate change and the pain that people experience in their lives.
RJ: You’ve been involved with advancing democracy here in the U.S. and around the globe. What is your take on the current political climate?
Heintz: The challenges to democracy are not new. They did not happen as a result of the 2016 election or the 2020 election or the 2024 election. They have been simmering for more than 40 years.
It’s been a slow, steady decline in people’s trust in our democratic institutions, people’s trust in politicians, people’s trust in one another as we’ve gotten more atomized in society and more isolated from each other.
And we have the added influence of the social media environment, which allows people to curate their own news sources and live within in many cases a very narrow ideological frame of information and not expose themselves to other points of view, other ideas, other information.
Democracy requires that we trust each other because we are saying to each other, “Yes, I trust you to follow events and then use that knowledge to exercise your rights in the democracy to vote, to participate.” It’s really based on trust and if we have eroded that trust and that culture the institutions and mechanisms of democracy then become also very weak and under threat and at risk. So, we need to understand that and take measures to overcome the deficits in American democracy.
RJ: What can the average person do who’s experiencing the isolation and lack of trust you described?
Heintz: I urge people to get involved in the civic life of their communities, in whatever way is of interest to them. Contribute by being part of something. Join, participate, help, assist, volunteer. All of these things are hugely important.
We look at the scale of some of the problems we face, whether it’s climate change or global peace and people think, “What can I possibly do?” What you can do is in your neighborhood and in your community, and by making it a better place and getting to know your neighbors and your fellow citizens better and working together to solve local problems or to contribute to the betterment of the community. If we do this in the tens of millions across this country, it adds up to a healthy and vibrant democratic society.
Here in the River Towns, one thing my wife and I are discovering is that there are all these wonderful clubs and organizations that are part of civil society whether it’s the Dobbs Ferry Garden Club that my wife is now involved in, or the Irvington Boat and Beach Club. It brings people together who share an interest in gardening or in boating and they may be very different in every other respect — their political beliefs, their socioeconomic status, their ethnic background — but they share this common interest. And by doing the thing they care about together, they actually learn about each other and build a broader appreciation for their neighbors and the quality of the communities they live in.
RJ: Tell me about the $25 million project to redevelop John D. Rockefeller’s orangerie into the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, which opened in 2022.
Heintz: There was this large greenhouse essentially and it was yelling at me: “Do something with me” and so we started thinking about this in 2015 and engaged with consultants about whether it would be feasible to convert this big, empty building into a comfortable, multipurpose, multidisciplinary arts center. We do a lot of performance there, but it also has a gallery where we have exhibitions, and it has an artist’s studio so when we have a painter or a sculptor who’s doing a residency at Pocantico they have a studio to work in.
Because of our commitment to climate change it’s completely powered by solar energy. We keep experimenting and keep getting new audiences and the knowledge and interest is growing. The David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center was kind of the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that has made the campus cohesive.
