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Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker
Community leader draws on her immigrant story to strengthen Western New York
Story by Irene Liguori,with photo by Douglas Levere, BA '89
Dedecker close-up
UB degree EdM ’01; Favorite quote from a restaurant wall “Success is the point in the road where preparation meets opportunity”; Memory of leaving Cuba at age 8 Just before boarding the plane, she slung a favorite doll over one shoulder—a signal to those secretly watching from afar that no one in the family was to be detained; National service Vice president of the National Conference for Community and Justice, and board member of the National Association of Commissions for Women
The New York Times in 1999 called her “an immaculately turned-out woman.”
The striking beauty, polished wardrobe and inspiring accomplishments of Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker invite comparisons to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—a woman so frequently noted for her taste and poise that it sometimes eclipsed her equally impressive intellectual acumen.
Dedecker, a warm and seemingly tireless Cuban exile, has paved a career path that has included leading the 193,000- member Association of Junior Leagues International, service on national boards and the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, and shepherding the U.S. Committee for the United Nations International Year of the Volunteer celebration in 2000.
Today, as president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo (CFGB), Dedecker devotes herself to making Western New York a stronger, more inclusive place to live. She also has found time to serve on key community boards and collaborated to launch the Family Justice Center of Erie County for victims of domestic violence.
Dedecker says she owes much of her drive and passion to her parents. “‘Grow where you are planted.’ My parents very much have lived that philosophy,” she says. Three years after seeking permission to come to the United States, the Perez-Bode family was ordered to leave Cuba two days after Christmas 1967. On December 29, they boarded a plane, each of them allowed to carry only a meager bag of personal items.
From almost that moment on, the University at Buffalo became a recurring theme in Dedecker’s life: first helping her father revalidate his dentistry degree, next as the setting in which Dedecker received her 2001 master’s degree in education and today as a key partner assisting the foundation she now runs.
CFGB hired Dedecker in 2005 as vice president to increase the impact of its $185 million in assets and more than 800 endowed and non-endowed charitable funds. She wants to make concrete changes to help Buffalo thrive once again as it did in its heyday a century ago.
In 2007, Dedecker announced a five-year strategy to address some of the most serious challenges facing Western New York, while simultaneously building on the area’s strengths as a center for arts, history, architecture and natural resources.
One year later, Read to Succeed Buffalo—a school-readiness program designed to help reverse the dismal reality that 50 percent of Buffalo’s preschoolers are at risk for academic failure—is one early initiative already showing promising results.
UB in the News
New York Times
SUNY weighs the value of Division I sports
An article in the New York Times looks at the advantages and disadvantages SUNY schools have encountered as they upgrade their athletic programs to compete with other major public institutions at the Division I level. UB is mentioned as having led the way to Division I in 1991 and the football team played a bowl game for the first time in January, but the path has not been as smooth for other SUNY campuses. The article quotes former UB president William H. Greiner and UB athletic director Warde Manuel.
New York Times
UB photographer says a rephotograph lifts the illusion that time stops
UB's Doug Levere, photographer in University Communications, is quoted in a New York Times article about the changing urban landscape of New York City.
USA Today
Government downsizing may result in a dangerous concentration of power, expert says
An article in USA Today about efforts in Western New York to downsize local governments and the wave of national frustration over big government that was illustrated this year by raucous town-hall style meeting over health care reports a study by UB's Regional Institute concluded that if every municipality in Erie County cut two legislators, the savings would be "negligible," less than $4 per person a year in most cases. The article quotes Kathryn Foster, director of the Regional Institute.