{"id":3378,"date":"2019-12-12T11:15:30","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T16:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3378"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:32","slug":"out-in-front-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2019\/12\/out-in-front-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Out in Front"},"content":{"rendered":"
Seton Hall\u2019s first female valedictorian, Elaine Lardieri Edgcomb \u201969, went on to become a pioneer in microfinance.<\/div><\/div>\n

Fifty years ago, on a bright morning in early June, Elaine Lardieri stood on Seton Hall\u2019s commencement stage and addressed the Class of 1969 and their families.<\/p>\n

It was a landmark moment for her, of course, but also for the University at large: after 113 years in existence, the school had its first female valedictorian.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been long enough now that she doesn\u2019t remember exactly how she found out she\u2019d landed the honor. Long enough that she can\u2019t find a copy of her valedictory speech. But she can still remember looking into the front row and seeing her family beaming up at her, and her boyfriend Paul Edgcomb \u201968\/M.A.\u201971, still a few years away from becoming her husband, snapping away on his little Kodak Instamatic camera.<\/p>\n

Elaine Edgcomb \u201969 is certain that at some point in her speech, she quoted this passage from Edna St. Vincent Millay\u2019s poem, \u201cRenascence\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe world stands out on either side<\/em><\/h3>\n

No wider than the heart is wide;<\/em><\/h3>\n

Above the world is stretched the sky, \u2014<\/em><\/h3>\n

No higher than the soul is high.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In those lines, she wanted to tell her classmates that their success wouldn\u2019t depend only on their knowledge, but also on \u201cthe content of our souls and how we opened ourselves up to others,\u201d she says now.<\/p>\n

That sunny June morning wasn\u2019t the last time Edgcomb would burst through a door that had previously been locked to women, just as it wasn\u2019t the last time she considered the \u201ccontent of her soul\u201d and prioritized helping others. Though no one in the audience knew it yet, the woman quoting \u201cRenascence\u201d to them would go on to blaze new trails everywhere she went \u2014 starting with high-level international work for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and continuing into the earliest days of microfinance and microenterprise.<\/p>\n

When Elaine Lardieri\u00a0<\/strong>arrived on campus in the fall of 1965, there weren\u2019t many students like her. \u201cShe was something very new to Seton Hall,\u201d says her friend Bob Windrem \u201968. \u201cShe was a woman on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the start of her sophomore year, just 22 women were enrolled on the South Orange campus \u2014 scattered in among 2,655 men. (Those numbers changed significantly in early 1968, her junior year, when South Orange went fully co-ed after Seton Hall closed its satellite campuses in Newark and Jersey City.)<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Newark, she lived so close to Seton Hall that she could easily walk to campus. Her father drove for the United Parcel Service and her mother worked in the Newark Public Library. Neither had gone to college, so it was a jubilant moment for the whole family when she enrolled in Seton Hall\u2019s Humanities Honors Program (HHP) \u2014 one of the few programs open to women at that time \u2014 on a full scholarship.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>HHP students studied Western history and culture through interdisciplinary courses that wove literature, music, dance and other fine arts into the history of each time period. \u201cIt\u2019s something she\u2019s carried with her for her whole life,\u201d her husband, Paul, says of the program\u2019s approach. \u201cIf we go to an opera, she\u2019s going to read the libretto and learn the history behind it. The same thing with a piece of art or a poem. She comes at it from all angles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edgcomb also found herself drawn to Latin America. A double major in history and Spanish, she remembers taking a course on Latin American history that covered popular movements and \u201cthe continuing efforts by the poor to improve their lives,\u201d she says. That course is what sparked everything that followed: graduate school, her years at CRS and, eventually, her work in microfinance.<\/p>\n

Guatemala, 1976
\n<\/strong>In the middle of the night on Feb. 4, 1976, Elaine Edgcomb was shaken awake in Guatemala City. \u201cI knew it was an earthquake the minute it started rumbling,\u201d she says now.<\/p>\n

As the rattling continued, all she could do was sit in bed, waiting for it to stop, wondering whether she would survive and thinking about her family back home in the United States.<\/p>\n

When the jostling stopped, Edgcomb crawled out of bed and found the co-worker she was staying with. They spent the rest of that night in a car together \u2014 the safest place to go, they\u2019d been told \u2014 as aftershocks rocked the country.<\/p>\n

Later it would emerge that 23,000 people had died from that earthquake, more than a billion dollars of damage had occurred, and almost a sixth of Guatemala\u2019s population had been left homeless. But she didn\u2019t know any of that yet. She just knew that as an assistant regional director for Catholic Relief Services, it was her mission to help anyone who needed it the best she could.<\/p>\n

In the days after the quake, Edgcomb and her co-workers quickly began to organize disaster relief, setting up flights into the country with food, clothing, medications and plastic tarps.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1943 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to assist World War II survivors in Europe, CRS had grown into a multi-continent source of humanitarian assistance, disaster aid and socioeconomic development programs by the time Edgcomb went to work there in 1971. She started out as a development assistant, fresh out of Georgetown University\u2019s master\u2019s program in Latin American studies, but soon she joined a new crop of CRS women who were choosing international fieldwork over domestic desk jobs.<\/p>\n

By the time she left CRS in1981, Edgcomb was directing the agency\u2019s development and relief programs across 13 countries in Central America and the Caribbean. She spent more than a quarter of each year traveling in those regions, working on an ever-evolving slate of projects that ranged from agricultural development to carving out leadership development opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderlying all of the work was the recognition that people were poor not because of defects of their character,\u201d she says, \u201cbut because of structures and political systems that excluded them or extracted more value from them than they gave in return.\u201d<\/p>\n

All\u00a0Over the World, 1985<\/strong>
\nThe term microfinance<\/em> was still a full decade away from appearing in print when, in 1985, Edgcomb helped found a network dedicated to its ideas.<\/p>\n

She was intrigued by the new strategy of arranging small loans for people in developing countries who
\nhad no credit or assets \u2014 and who often worked outside the formal sector in \u201cmicroenterprises\u201d like street vending or artisan craftsmanship \u2014 in order to help them grow their businesses and better support their families.<\/p>\n

What began as a one-year exploratory project became the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network, a nonprofit that still exists today.<\/p>\n

With Edgcomb at its helm, SEEP connected U.S.-based nonprofits that were all working in international microenterprise development and microfinance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe became the venue for people to share their experiences, identify best practices and develop tools that would help people all around the world,\u201d she says. The network included just 25 organizations at first. Today it consists of several hundred nonprofits in 150 countries.<\/p>\n

After 13 years running SEEP, Edgcomb turned her focus closer to home. In 1998, she joined The Aspen Institute and helped start FIELD \u2014 an initiative designed to test, evaluate and document innovative approaches to helping disadvantaged entrepreneurs escape poverty and create jobs.<\/p>\n

She watched with amazement as the landscape expanded from a handful of U.S.-focused microenterprise programs when she started to well over 400.<\/p>\n

\u201cFIELD has in many ways been the leading source of knowledge-building and expertise for the U.S. microenterprise development field,\u201d says Joyce Klein, who worked with Edgcomb on FIELD starting in 1998 and took over as its director in 2012. \u201cThat was very much because of Elaine\u2019s leadership and the knowledge, expertise and commitment that she brought to that work and that role.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klein says she and her co-workers also admired Edgcomb for her integrity. \u201cShe had a very strong ethical and moral code that she was going to adhere to,\u201d Klein says. \u201cPeople respond to that in a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe speaks her mind,\u201d adds Paul. \u201cThat\u2019s never bothered her in any situation. But there\u2019s always discussion and respect for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metuchen, New Jersey, 2019<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s hard not to spot the obvious theme running through Edgcomb\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9: she has a habit of getting to things early, whether it\u2019s as one of few women on the Seton Hall campus, one of few women working in the field for CRS, one of few people connecting international microfinance efforts, or one of few people considering the promise of microenterprise in our own country.<\/p>\n

But Edgcomb, who\u2019s now enjoying retired life with Paul in Metuchen, New Jersey, suggests a second connection. \u201cThroughout my career, what was important to me was how one achieved greater social and economic development and equity for people who had less than we had,\u201d she says. (It\u2019s a philosophy the Edgcomb children also absorbed. Lauren, J.D. \u201807 and David have both found ways to help those who are struggling: David as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama; Lauren as a bankruptcy attorney who serves clients in economic and financial distress.)<\/p>\n

Edgcomb says it all goes back to her faith \u2014 specifically, the Catholic social doctrine, which \u201cinfluenced me greatly.\u201d She notes that \u201cthe role of Christians is to seek justice and opportunity for those who have been excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the time in which she was working, microfinance and microenterprise became her tools-of-choice to reach that goal. \u201cAnd I think we made some progress and helped some people improve their lives,\u201d Edgcomb says, \u201cbut clearly, there is so much more to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look back at your life, it almost seems like a movie that had to flow the way it did,\u201d she adds, thinking back to her undergraduate days and that morning on the University commencement stage. \u201cI am forever grateful that Seton Hall opened me up to a profound and consequential way of looking at, and being in, the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research assistance on this article was provided by Alan Delozier, university archivist.<\/em><\/p>\n

Molly Petrilla is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seton Hall\u2019s first female valedictorian, Elaine Lardieri Edgcomb \u201969, went on to become a pioneer in microfinance.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingOut in Front<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4613,"featured_media":3239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,247,11,255,258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2015-2019","category-2019-2022","category-alumni","category-articles","category-articles-2015-2019","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3432,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions\/3432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}