Meeting Organizer Quits Job Local Dispute At People To People Mars Violence Conference Planning
Two days after a Spokane woman went to the White House to help plan a world conference on family violence, she faced a demotion back home.
Dawn Davis resigned from People to People Ambassador Programs Inc. on Wednesday rather than be demoted for not sending her quota of education travelers abroad.
Company officials say the departure will not affect the September 1998 gathering in New Delhi, India.
“The conference is still very much on,” said Toby Fiorino, Davis’ supervisor.
But her resignation effectively removes Davis as co-chairwoman of the conference she had envisioned and planned while working for the Spokane-based Ambassador Programs.
Davis spent the past 18 months organizing the event, garnering the support of such powerful advocates as Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund and Bonnie Campbell, director of the Violence Against Women Office at the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I’m just really struggling with the whole situation,” Davis said Thursday when contacted at her home.
She refused to give further details but acknowledged the timing of the dispute is “unique.”
On Oct. 21, Davis and her firm’s chief executive officer, John Ueberroth, met with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff to ask the first lady to appear as keynote speaker at the conference.
After she got back to Spokane on Oct. 23, Davis was hit with a contract dispute. As director of adult education and social sciences at the firm, she was expected to send a certain number of professionals overseas - a quota she failed to meet while planning the conference.
“We are surprised that Dawn has chosen to resign,” said Ambassador President Jeffrey Thomas on Thursday. “We’re disappointed she won’t be part of the team and that she won’t be here to help implement this important global event - especially as members of the Ambassador team are en route to India, South Africa and Jordan to discuss this event with leaders and representatives of these countries.”
The split casts a shadow over the business that had touted itself as being big enough to take on a global issue without regard to the bottom line.
In interviews with The Spokesman-Review earlier this month, Davis said the company was donating two years of her time and the company’s resources to make the event happen.
Thomas also told the newspaper that the for-profit company is in a unique position to help nonprofit organizations pull off this kind of global assembly.
“Things like this need to be done and everyone can come out ahead,” Thomas said. “We can employ people, take a stand and make something happen.”
Earlier this month, Davis received her 10-year anniversary pin from People to People.
For the past two decades, the company has sent thousands of high school students and adult professionals to meet with their counterparts abroad.
Two years ago, the family-owned company was sold to former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth and his brother John, who is based in Newport Beach, Calif.
Davis was the fourth adult program marketing director since the takeover.
John Ueberroth was out of the country Thursday and unavailable for comment.
Davis said she wishes the conference success. She said she believes in her original mission and would like to turn her attention locally.
“I want to do something with bringing people together, community education and family violence,” she said. “That’s where I see my future.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo