Many in the Atlanta community are mourning the death Saturday of Anne Sterchi, the longtime executive director of the J.B. Fuqua Foundation, who distributed charitable funds to countless education, health, and human and social services projects across the city.
Sterchi, 69, died Saturday morning at Piedmont Hospital after complications associated with a viral infection, said her brother, Kent Sterchi, of Orlando. She is survived by Kent Sterchi and another brother.
Sterchi was the “right-hand person” for Atlanta businessman and philanthropist J.B. Fuqua in vetting nonprofits for his private foundation, close friend Beth Finnerty said. She said Sterchi worked for the family foundation, established in 1970, for decades and was an integral part of the philanthropic and nonprofit community in Atlanta.
“She has made a huge impact on so many parts of our city. In the nonprofit world, in the arts community, the health care community,” Finnerty, the president of mental health nonprofit Skyland Trail, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She was very involved in the giving. She would get to know the nonprofits they were giving to, and that’s how a lot of us became her friends.”
Credit: Supplied
Credit: Supplied
Raised in Orlando, Sterchi graduated from the University of Virginia before moving to New York City, where she worked in the financial services sector. She loved traveling and had a job helping to set up sports events overseas before moving to Atlanta, Finnerty said.
Sterchi was introduced to J.B. Fuqua in Atlanta and started working in his foundation in January 2000. She continued to guide donations when Fuqua’s son, J. Rex Fuqua, took over.
Finnerty said Sterchi had a wide network of friends, “an infectious laugh, beautiful, smiling blue eyes and a fabulous smile.” She loved poetry, dancing, walking on the Atlanta Beltline and working crossword puzzles, and was “smart as a whip,” Finnerty said.
“She brought all of those beautiful skills that she had to her work, and she was very thoughtful in advising the Fuquas on their giving in the Atlanta community,” Finnerty said. “She was just a phenomenal person, loved by many, and she embraced life to its fullest. She was really a force of nature.”
Credit: Supplied
Credit: Supplied
David Weitnauer, another close friend and president of the R. Howard Dobbs Jr. Foundation, said Sterchi’s empathy and intelligence contributed to her excellent representation of the Fuqua family’s philanthropy. He said Sterchi was “a gift of a human being.”
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