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Now the truth can be told about Carol Newell's visionary generosity
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To wit, multi-millionaire and philanthropist Carol Newell has spent most of her life staying in motels, not hotels. Until recently, she’d never owned a matching purse and shoes. But it’s not because she’s a miserly millionaire—far from it—it’s just that she’s never had a sense of needing “more stuff.”
When Newell went away to university in her 20s to study geology, she rented a rundown student house with a group of friends. When her mother came to visit, she was horrified.
“She said, ‘Oh Carol—this is a slum!’” Newell recalls. “I was really angry and said ‘No, it isn’t! This is regular housing. This is how people live.’ And the thing is, I loved that place.”
Big Hearts, Deep Pockets
Joel Solomon, the soft-spoken, business-savvy native Tennessean with a lingering whiskey-drip of a drawl, is still convalescing from a recent and very successful kidney transplant. But he’s more than happy to talk about his business partnership with Carol Newell.
They met in 1990 at a gathering of the Threshold Foundation, a group of individuals who had either come into financial windfalls or had inherited wealth and wanted to use their funds for causes of social justice.
Solomon had inherited several million dollars from his father, who also passed on the genetic kidney disease that ended his life prematurely. Solomon has speculated on how his illness has bestowed on him the gift of knowledge that life is precious and sometimes short. And how the wealth he inherited has been a mixed blessing.
“There’s a false authority that comes with money. People treat you differently. Everybody has an idea how you should spend your money. You become the target for foundations, universities. Yes, you face guilt, shame, hubris, and uncertainty and doubts about your choices. Doubts about whether your friends are really your friends. It can cause jealousy and rifts in families.
“In Carol’s case,” he continues, “she inherited far more money than she felt she had any reason to have. She wanted to do something meaningful and was looking for answers and strategies.”
Solomon had both the business chops Newell needed, and the ethical and environmental passion she admired, to do something constructive with her wealth.
“We are both the visionaries,” says Newell, “but he is very much the implementer. I can tell you, there would be absolutely nothing done, or very little of this would have been done, if it was just me. He is key to this.”
It was the first of many times she would find herself clashing with her family, and the expectations of how she should use her money to support a certain kind of lifestyle.
If Newell had grown up in a big city, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article about her. Or at least not for the same reasons.
But as fate would have it, this heiress to the Newell Rubbermaid fortune and recent Order of Canada recipient grew up in two small towns: one in upstate New York, the other in Illinois. The young Carol attended regular public school, and outside of living in a “big” house, she grew up blissfully unaware that she might be “different.”
Growing up in small-town America in the ’60s meant no exposure to high society, designer stores, a culture of affluence, or ostentatious displays of wealth. But it did give her a lifelong connection to community.
“In a small town, there’s more ‘keeping together’ in community,” she maintains. “I think money actually does separate us from community. It can have a deeply isolating effect.”
Newell’s father died when she was just nine years old, an event that brought not only a traumatic loss, but another life-changing event: her first multi-million-dollar inheritance.
Yet her childhood unfolded without any sense of separation from small-town life until she was sent to an all-girls boarding school in upstate New York at the age of 15. It was a good experience, she says, one that imbued her with a sense of self-reliance. But when she came back to her small town, class differences began to make themselves apparent.
“My best friend from Grade 8 told me another one of our friends had approached her and said, ‘Why do you want to hang out with that Carol Newell? She’s so rich.’ I felt terrible.... And it was probably one of the reasons I eventually became anonymous, because I never wanted to be treated differently due to my wealth.”
Three decades later, she is just now stepping out from behind her mask of anonymity. But make no mistake: Carol Newell—the reluctant millionaire—may have been invisible, but she has been far from idle.
As the founder of the philanthropic entity The Endswell Foundation and the seed-capital company Renewal Partners, she has been using her money for the good of nature and community in a very big, but—up until recently—very hush-hush way.
Newell has poured tens of millions of dollars garnered from the sales of billions of curtain rods, cookware combos, and other household items, along with the aggressive acquisitions activities which provided her Newell Rubbermaid fortune, into funding non-profit and for-profit companies that can prove a commitment to social justice, sustainability, and protecting the environment.
Money has gone to fund groups that fought for the protection of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest, and to companies like Capers Community Market, Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (SPUD), Lunapads, Communicopia, Across Borders Media, Happy Planet, and, for the record, publications like SharedVISION.
Newell doesn’t like to be tied down on just how much she inherited, but it’s in the ballpark of US$50 million. She has committed to giving most of it away.
She came into the bulk of her fortune when her mother passed away, by which time she’d come to B.C. In her 30s, she moved to Cortes Island. That’s also when she connected with Joel Solomon, president of Renewal Partners, who shared her values and vision. He had the business drive and acumen to run Endswell and Renewal Partners out of Vancouver. He fronted them, while she lived a quiet and anonymous life on a remote B.C. island.
On Cortes, she pursued her passions for music and nature. She sang with an improvisational group and drummed with an African music ensemble. She remembers vividly one night when “all of the pieces of my life came together.”
A group of environmentalists whose cause Newell’s companies had funded were gathered at Hollyhock Centre on Cortes for a business retreat. Her African drumming ensemble had been hired to provide music at the end of each day’s sessions.
“Fifty different environmentalists dancing wildly away, and I’m drumming and singing. Joel is there and comes sashaying up to me, winking at me because he knows nobody else in the room knows and I was getting paid 50 bucks for the gig!” she recalls, laughing at the memory.
But there was a price to be paid for wearing a cloak of invisibility in terms of her deepest sense of integrity, both in her personal relationships and because of a burgeoning sense of a new mission.
“I walked with a secret; with a heavy burden of silence,” Newell says. After some deep soul-searching, she moved from Cortes to Vancouver in 2004. She came out from behind her mask and decided to go public, in hopes of convincing other people of vast wealth to “get up off their assets” and try to change the world.
Her latest venture is Play BIG. It’s a movement to encourage individuals with “exceptionally high net assets or ‘discretionary capital’ to use that immense capacity to leverage some change.” As the Play BIG website points out, “There are currently, worldwide, 85,000 people with $30 million or more.”
That could save a lot of rainforests.
Meanwhile, Newell is adjusting to life in the city, meeting with the rich and powerful, buying shoes to match her purses, and observing the allure of living in a big-city sea of consumer choice. She admits, guiltily, to having developed a fondness for staying at the occasional five-star hotel while on the road.
“I confess I like a Westin bed. And I’m a little horrified with myself. I feel like I’m letting myself down.”
There probably aren’t too many people who would condemn Newell for her weakness for the odd down comforter while she entices the wealthy to join her as she gallops toward a brighter future.
After all, this small-town Lone Ranger is still adjusting to life without her mask.
“Am I uncomfortable? Oftentimes, yeah. Do I love cocktail talk? No, not particularly. But I’m finding my way. It’s important.”
Pamela Post is a CBC News reporter, teacher, and mom who is rich in all the ways that matter.
Editor’s Note: Renewal Partners has been a longtime supporter and investor in SharedVISION.
