Marc Stern enjoys expansive views from his 18th-floor office at the TCW Tower in downtown.
His views on business as well as a longtime commitment to philanthropy that includes a role as chairman of Los Angeles Opera were shaped down on the farm – in this case a modest Vineland, N.J. vegetable farm where he grew up.
“My grandfather had been a farmer, my father, my uncle,” Stern said in a recent interview. “The farm is a business. It’s got all the stuff. It’s got weather, it’s got marketing, it’s got labor.”
Stern is chairman of TCW Group Inc., the fourth-largest money management firm based in Los Angeles County, with nearly $200 billion under management. He served as its president for 15 years before a tenure as chief executive from 2009 to 2012, exercising a longstanding fiscal conservatism born of his childhood agricultural experience – specifically with neighboring chicken farms.
The short version: Young Stern was in charge of collecting chicken manure from nearby farms, an effective, organic fertilizer for vegetables. The arrangement kept the coops clean and veggies healthy.
Stern called it the perfect free-market symbiosis: When manure was scarce, his farm paid for it. When there was too much, Stern got paid to scoop the poop.
The arrangement ended, however, when nearby homeowners objected to the odor during the approximately four days a year when manure was spread. Pressure from homeowners led government regulators to ban the use of chicken manure, forcing the vegetable farm to use costlier, less-effective synthetic fertilizer. The ban also led to chicken farmers disposing of manure in landfills.
Libertarian
“I think I became a libertarian because that made absolutely no sense to me,” Stern said, adding that his laissez faire attitude extends to social issues such as same-sex marriage. “Who marries who, or whatever, the government should stay out of it.”
Not that Stern completely eschews government’s role in a healthy economy. He serves as chairman of Eric Garcetti’s nonprofit Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, which unites government with nonprofit and philanthropic resources.
“I don’t agree with all of his issues, but I think we have a mayor who happens to be a fiscally conservative person,” Stern said.
Stern also has chickens to thank for his 51-year marriage to Eva Kuhn, daughter of one of the nearby chicken farmers. The couple met through a Jewish youth group in their early teens.
Stern’s commitment to philanthropy also began on the farm, where he observed his father, Albert, carefully reading and filing mailers seeking donations for causes. Stern said his father would quietly send a few dollars to the ones that touched his heart. Those who know the younger Stern say he does the same, though on a much grander scale – efforts that have placed the Sterns among L.A.’s most generous donors through the Marc and Eva Stern Foundation. The foundation had $4.3 million in assets, according to the most recent info available from IRS filings (see page 16 for the Business Journal’s 2017 List of Largest Charitable Foundations and Trusts).
The foundation represents a small fraction of his giving.
Radio days
Stern is probably best known for his efforts on behalf of Los Angeles Opera, a resident company of downtown’s Los Angeles Music Center. Credit Stern’s father for introducing him to opera via Metropolitan Opera in New York broadcasts on the radio. Stern also is a managing director on the Met board.
“I don’t think that there are very many people in the world who are as passionate about anything as Marc is in his devotion to arts and education,” said Plácido Domingo, LA Opera’s general director. “Marc is genuinely devoted to making the world a better place through his incredible generosity. … But the countless hours that he gives so freely – as when he stepped in to serve as CEO for LA Opera in 2007, to name just one instance – might be even more valuable.”
The opera’s chief executive, Christopher Koelsch, called Stern the single most influential person in the opera company’s history.
“He shaped the institution, it’s much larger than just the philanthropy,” Koelsch said.
He credits Stern for countless hours of volunteer effort in steering the company through financial troubles that necessitated a $14 million loan from Los Angeles County in 2009. The company is currently on solid financial footing, with an operating budget just over $43 million.
“He served as a personal mentor for me as we pivoted the institution to the stability and strength it enjoys today,” Koelsch said. “He plays 3-D chess, always thinking of the long game.”
Stern won’t reveal numbers, but opera officials confirm that the Stern foundation is the opera company’s largest donor to date.
While the amounts of Stern’s individual gifts are not disclosed, the total funding by definition exceeds 2006’s much-ballyhooed gift of $6 million from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation toward LA Opera’s ambition production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
The Sterns multiple donations also make the couple the largest donors to the Music Center outside of the Disney family.
Future funds
Stern is bullish about the future of philanthropy in Los Angeles.
“Philanthropy here is very much driven by individuals, and we do have a good solid basis of locally based foundations, again, most of which were started by individuals,” he said.
He believes potential donors are there to be mined from the area’s burgeoning entertainment, technology and asset management fields.
“There are a lot of younger people, women and men, who can afford to be philanthropic that really haven’t been tapped,” Stern said. “Younger people in their 40s and 50s. Much younger than that, they’re not ready. Whether we in the performing arts are astute enough, and creative enough, to attract them, that’s another question. I’m optimistic.”
Sherry Lansing, former studio chief of Paramount Pictures motion picture group and now a full-time philanthropist via her Sherry Lansing Foundation, served for a number of years with Stern on the board of San Diego-based Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and said his desire to give back is innate.
“He’s got this incredible empathy gene,” Lansing said. “If he hears a story that touches him, (the subject) may find there’s a donation and they don’t even know who he is.”
Expect Marc and Eva Stern to continue to lead the way as, even after decades of financial success, the New Jersey farm kid is still in awe of having the resources for giving back.
“I spend almost as much time on this as my day job, right? On the other hand, I get to pay a lot of money to do it,” Stern said with a laugh. “It’s like my dad used to say on the farm: The hours are long, but on the other hand, the pay is rotten.”
