Two months after September 11, 2001, veteran private-investment manager Nathan Troutman left his Lincoln Center apartment and moved to Seattle to restructure Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s investment firm and holdings. Four years later, that job done, Troutman moved back — and was soon asked to join the board of Tuesday’s Children, the charity for kids who lost parents in the 9/11 attacks. “It was a strange feeling,” he says. “I was probably two or three degrees away from anyone lost in 9/11, but it was all still really fresh for me. Even though I was away from New York — or maybe because I was away — every 9/11 anniversary or memory was very poignant.”
It’s hard to believe that this month marks the sixth anniversary of the attacks. Yet for Troutman’s charity, the passage of time presented new challenges every day. Founded out of the Long Island home of Chris Burke, a former Cantor Fitzgerald employee whose four nephews were left fatherless when his brother died in the North Tower, the charity had seen its annual budget grow from $580,000 to about $2.5 million, and its programs expand to include not just mentoring and career development but parenting and decision-making programs for surviving spouses. Pre-teens at the time of the attacks, after all, are now applying to college; those who were teens are entering the workforce. “The needs of the families are always evolving,” Troutman says.
Because of his experience as a change agent, Troutman focused
on reorganizing the charity’s governance structure. He trimmed the board, established oversight procedures and ran cost-benefit analyses. He also took advantage of his flexible schedule — he had just started his own boutique firm, Troutman Capital — to allocate about a day each week to the effort, reveling in getting his hands dirty. “That’s why I wanted to get involved,” he says. “There was stuff to be done, stuff I could do. I could contribute.”
