April 2004

Theirs is the stuff that novels and movies are made of. William Melton and Patricia Smith Melton are a renaissance couple of sorts, combining their expansive interests and talents to build new networks they hope will influence the world.

The couple became close friends while attending Westmar College, a small school in Iowa. They graduated and went their separate ways. Bill traveled extensively in the Far East before settling in Hawaii where he started several technology enterprises. Patricia lived primarily in Washington, DC, with seven years in a valley in Tennessee. She became a photographer, a playwright, and a broker of vintage quilts. They each married, raised children, and divorced.

Thirteen years ago, they reunited. They live in a modern English Tudor home on a hillside outside Vienna, VA, filled with handsome art from around the world. And they have built a relationship based on mutual admiration and common goals.

Bill, the son of a Nebraska preacher, studied psychology as an undergraduate and earned a graduate degree in Asian studies. He spent five years working in Vietnam and Taiwan and “being a young bum in Asia.” His Asian connections served him well in providing a manufacturing base for the telecommunications enterprises he started, including Verifone, the point-of-sale credit verification terminals used in most businesses today. He moved to Washington, DC, in 1986 to represent Verifone, which went public in 1991, and positioned himself to invest in a number of enterprises including Transaction Network Systems and AOL. In 1995 he started CyberCash, which created the back-end technology for commerce over the Internet. He sold that business to Verisign, became a quiet investor in other enterprises, and now sits on the boards of more than a dozen companies.

Bill met VPP’s Mario Morino through The Capital Investors and was intrigued by the mission of the then new philanthropic organization. “I thought inner-city crises were in great need of attention and care, but I didn’t have the time or expertise to focus on those issues…(VPP) was a wholesale way for me to provide support.” Recently, Bill visited Heads Up with fellow investor Jack Davies and hopes to get to know other VPP investment partners as well.

While Bill was building enterprises here and abroad, Patricia pursued a variety of careers. She was a writer and photographer for the War on Poverty of the Office of Economic Opportunity and also taught photography for the Smithsonian Associates Program. She has written and produced several plays, and her personal quilt collection is currently on a US tour with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions.

In 1991, soon after they married, Bill and Patricia co-founded The Melton Educational Foundation, an international program designed to bring together college students from diverse corners of the world to learn with and about each other. Bill says the program was prompted by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. “I knew how transformative it was for young people to be involved in cultural exchange.” Five universities—in the US, China, Chile, India, and Germany—select five new fellows each year for a total of 80-90 active Melton Fellows at any time. The students communicate year-round via the Internet and have an annual week-long symposium at one of the host universities. To date, nearly 250 students have been through the program.

The Meltons explain that one of the goals of the program is to bring together students from cultures that are undergoing rapid change. The participating school in the US is Dillard University, a respected, historically black college in New Orleans. The Meltons believe the experience has been enlightening and transformative for all of the students.

A second international incident prompted the creation of another Melton foundation. Patricia says that a few days after September 11, “I woke up and realized I needed to bring together a circle of women to figure out how women can be empowered to make peace happen.” She started contacting people she didn’t know to assemble a nucleus of women from around the globe who could frame the issues and opportunities for peace. A few months later PEACE X PEACE was born.

“We define peace as more than the absence of violence,” says Patricia. “It must have substance—education, inclusion of everyone, financial equity, restorative (rather than retributive) justice, freedom of speech, and integrity in media.” She believes women are more inclined than men to befriend and support one another and are influenced by the need to create safe nurturing environments for their children. Women and children also have a tremendous stake in peace because they are by far the greatest casualties of war.

The PEACE X PEACE (“peace by peace”) Global Network uses the Internet to connect circles of women in the U.S., one-to-one, with circles of women outside the US, providing the technology and translation services to enable these women to exchange information, educate, and support each other. Last month, for example, a group of women in California held a benefit that provided funding for a day-long Women’s Competitive Sports Day organized by their “Sister Circle” in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Patricia hopes to raise funds to enable women in developing and war-torn countries to access the Web at cybercafés or rent computer time from local nonprofits in order to be in the Global Network. On June 11, 2004, PBS stations around the country will have a primetime airing of Peace by Peace: Women on the Frontlines, a documentary produced and directed by Patricia that highlights women in five nations engaged in the dangerous work of building peace and democracy. Patricia will spend much of this year promoting the documentary and raising the funds to extend the PEACE X PEACE Global Network, especially connecting women in the US with women in Muslim nations. “If you want peace, you have to invest in the commodities of peace—women. The work women do has not been recognized as the primary force in healing and reweaving cultures,” she says.

Bill, who is an advisor to PEACE X PEACE says that “what Patricia is doing follows the path we’ve often talked about in evolving technology—the creation of a global village.”

Together, they are trying to make that happen.