Honest Feedback

One year later, still no replacement for Derek Yach

Revisiting the Foundation's site today, I notice that while Derek Yach left on October 25, 2021 for reasons that remain unknown, the quest for a replacement has apparently not been successful. Not that this permanent interim situation seems to bother the present team. I assume they all keep their substantial compensation so all is well. The board members who had left have not been replaced either but a team of 5 is enough to keep running, as I had explained. You can look at the still active grants here. The list also includes closed grants. Very little info is available about what they are about.

Derek is out. What is left?

Nobody will believe the press release (copied below as well). 

“After careful consideration, the Board has determined that now is the right time for a new leader to guide the essential efforts of the Foundation, its team and its work with partners around the world,” said Pamela Parizek, Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.

As you know the board has zero credibility and the same goes for the staff. Derek leaving with deep satisfaction?

What's left of his unthinkable project? 

What a waste of resources :( :( and what is the true story behind Derek's departure?

FOUNDATION FOR A SMOKE-FREE WORLD ANNOUNCES LEADERSHIP TRANSITION

NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2021 – Foundation for a Smoke-Free World today announced that Dr. Derek Yach will no longer serve as President and Board Director. Heidi Goldstein, General Counsel, and David Janazzo, CFO and EVP of Operations and Finance, will serve as Interim Co-Presidents, effective immediately, while the Board conducts a search for a new President to lead the foundation and its vital mission forward.

“After careful consideration, the Board has determined that now is the right time for a new leader to guide the essential efforts of the Foundation, its team and its work with partners around the world,” said Pamela Parizek, Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. “As we continue to take urgent action to accelerate progress toward ending smoking in this generation, we look forward to this opportunity to take the Foundation to the next level of achievement. The Foundation remains squarely focused on its mission to improve global health by reducing death and disease caused by smoking, and Heidi and David, together with the rest of our talented team, will continue advancing our global research grantmaking, range of innovative programs and powerful public health collaborations without interruption.”

Ms. Parizek continued, “On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Derek for helping to establish and build the Foundation. We deeply appreciate the contributions he has made to this team’s work and to communities around the world through decades of ground-breaking efforts in tobacco control and public health. We wish him all the best.”

Dr. Yach commented, “The Foundation’s ongoing work to end the world’s largest single preventable cause of death could not be more needed today. I leave the Foundation with deep satisfaction that we now have an emerging cadre of hundreds of researchers, advocates and industry scientists dedicating themselves to this goal. My future efforts aim to complement them.”

ABOUT FOUNDATION FOR A SMOKE-FREE WORLD

The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is an independent, U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) private foundation with the purpose of improving global health by ending smoking in this generation. The Foundation supports its mission through three core pillars: Health, Science, and Technology; Agriculture and Livelihoods; and Industry Transformation. Funded by annual gifts from PMI Global Services Inc. (“PMI”), the Foundation is independent from PMI and operates in a manner that ensures its independence from any commercial entity. For more information about the Foundation, please visit www.smokefreeworld.org.

Contact:

Nicole Bradley

Foundation for a Smoke-Free World

[email protected]

What are the 30 mysterious and inconvenient questions the FSFW declines to answer and Le Monde does not want to share?

A short time after publishing the previous post about the 30 mysterious questions sent by Le Monde's journalist that Derek Yach declined to answer, I emailed said journalist to ask her if she would share them with me. She declined. I wonder why. So I am going to email Derek with the same request: maybe he'll be more transparent than Le Monde? seize an opportunity for transparency? 

When the French public radio station France Culture targets the Foundation

Just found about this radio segment aired in April, on France Culture. Interview with Stéphane Horel. Everything in French (of course). Title: "The secret war of Philip Morris against the World Health Organization and the tobacco control experts". Stéphane Horel states she asked repeatedly for an interview with Derek and finally sent 30 questions but did not receive any detailed answer. I'd be very curious to read (and publish) the 30 unanswered questions.

What future in 2021 for the The Global Health Perspectives Podcasts by Derek Yach? and for the Foundation itself?

As for now (May 7, 2021) Derek has only hosted one interview in 2021, on February 9 for the podcast. Is there a future for this podcast that has lost its place on the Foundation's front page and is now at the bottom of the "press room" section (scroll down, keep scrolling down unto "media tools")? What is its audience? Does it deserve a future? The Foundation's blog that was never very prolific has produced 3 articles (all in January 2021). Among the published articles in 2021 one finds 3 by Derek, all in March. Besides Derek, what are the other 24 staff members and 7 board members doing to help and justify their often significant compensation? As for grants, since there is zero communication from the Foundation about them, except once a year in the very limited format of the IRS tax return 990 form (scroll down), one can only wait until later in 2021 to find out what happened in 2020. Beyond the podcast, what future for the Foundation?

The high cost of lost trust

While re-reading Derek's answer to Le Monde's article, I feel a growing awareness that after 3 years the question Jean-François Etter was asking after two years, "The FSFW, can it be trusted?', would unfortunately receive a NO answer. There is a high cost for lost trust (as explained in this 2002 article of The Harvard Business Review). Quote:

"Of all the factors that can undermine behavioral integrity, among the most dangerous is managers’ inability to see an integrity problem in themselves. The issue often arises because of our natural desire to see ourselves as consistent. In many companies, a manager’s path to success seems to lie in verbal endorsements of espoused values, while his actual behavior is expected to align with certain implicit norms and standards that may be more widely accepted. For example, managers often talk about empowerment without actually yielding any power. When this happens, psychological defense mechanisms activate to divert the manager’s attention from the contradiction so he can feel better about himself. The self-deception tends to perpetuate the problem."

The self-deception does perpetuate the problem. Derek mentioned Reagan's motto, Trust but verify (a Russian proverb) at the bottom of the page 221 of his book Project Unthinkable: by making verification difficult, he has very much eroded the trust part of the equation.

Derek's answer to the article in Le Monde

Derek has just posted an answer to the article in Le Monde (in English and in French -pdf-). I wonder how many people who read the initial article will read his answer and how many will be convinced by Derek. There are certainly things to be debated in Stéphane Horel's text but I still think it would have been more effective to engage her before her writing, even with the risk of being frustrated with the end result. I don't 'buy' Derek's argument that the Foundation is  transparent because it publishes its annual 990 PF tax forms at  the bottom of its financials page (in a pdf format). The information disclosed, he qualifies as 'project overviews" consists of only one sentence description and is totally inadequate to convey relevant information. As long as Derek will maintain this position and this secretive behavior, he will retain zero credibility in terms of transparency. That's too bad because there is no real argument, nor advantage (quite the opposite) to keep things that way. But it looks like Derek does not want to hear the people, even within the THR community who tell him this is inadequate and ask him to change. The end result is a significant and probably growing credibility and trust gap, that is completely self created and inflicted.  Why such a self-destructive approach? What prevents the FSFW to communicate frankly, immediately and in a detailed way about the grants and contracts that are awarded, later with what results? Instead of burying them once a year with one line for each in a pdf document? Unfortunately I can only repeat what I wrote previously to no avail about this "false transparency" at the FSFW:  "To me, all this is in stark contrast with what Derek himself wrote in his book "Project Unthinkable", page 222: "We will make our case not by asking people to trust us, but through independent oversight, transparency and public reporting". This is not happening. Why? 

Why did Derek decline to answer questions from the French daily Le Monde?

The French daily Le Monde published on April 14 an article ( full access reserved to subscribers) focusing on the Foundation, under the title "The secret war of Philip Morris against WHO and the tobacco control experts', subtitle "The main cigarette manufacturer has created a foundation to lift the limitations to lobbying by the industry and promote alternatives to cigarettes." Here a link to an automatic translation in English.  Apparently Derek declined an interview (why?) but provided a statement (not posted yet on the Foundation's site). Did he think of inviting the journalist to his podcast? That would have been interesting. Declining to engage journalists is never a good option.

False transparency at the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World

For me, false transparency is for an organization (like The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World under Derek Yach's management) to claim they are 'transparent' when the most complete information they provide is the annual 990 form that is a legal obligation and the rest is drastically incomplete information about their activities, especially what they fund: for instance the amount of the funding for a grant is not provided except on the 990 form, a document that is not easy to consult and is only published once a year.

Letter of January 9th 2018 by Derek Yach, in answer to Clive Bates

Unfortunately this letter of January 9th 2018 had no follow up, especially on points 8 about 'External scrutiny" and 11 "Transparency". Jean-François Etter kept monitoring the FSFW but the group of 7 did not persist in trying to obtain improvement in the way FSFW operates and publicly challenge it to do better. Jean-François Etter's article of January 2020 still resumes all that needs to change but reading Derek's comment shows he does not see anything wrong in terms of transparency: opacity is justified as protection against harassment. Having experienced myself harassment and bullying from the FSFW's management and the complete lack of support from Derek in this instance, I am not sympathetic nor find this type of argument credible nor effective. I'll return in more details about my personal painful story in another post.