'We Want to Link the Net to Real Places and Improve Communities'

That job led McCormick to Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, where she got her MBA and then started work on a PhD, while simultaneously pursuing a master's degree in education from NYU. McCormick briefly put her studies on hold to work for the administration of Mayor Abraham Beame and then for that of Mayor Ed Koch, where she served first as a research director for the Temporary Commission on the City Finances (trying to identify some of the weaknesses of the city's management infrastructure), and later as a special assistant to the deputy mayor for labor relations and personnel (participating in collective bargaining with the city's uniformed and civilian unions). "This was the first half of 1978, and we had to have new contracts by June in order for the Federal government to release bonds" that would help the city recover from its brush with bankruptcy, McCormick says. "I can remember 4 AM negotiations in hotel rooms with policemen who made a point of wearing their weapons."

McCormick came to FCNY in 1981 "without portfolio," as she puts it, "but with the ability to take my interests in public-sector entrepreneurship and private-sector practices and to create some needed programs for city government." She dove into a series of projects that were designed to help city managers expand their skill sets. One of those projects, the LaGuardia Fellows Program, took people in New York City's government and rotated them through different agencies and functions -- "the same kind of managerial development that you'd get at IBM," McCormick notes. Another project used FCNY money to finance a management-exchange program with Japan. "In the public sector, you can't go somewhere else to learn something," McCormick says. "It's perceived as a misuse of the public's dollars. You might be investing millions in a water-filtration plant, but you can't go and look at some of the best plants in the world."

Over an eight-year period, McCormick's Manager's Exchange Program with Japan branched out to include officials from Chicago and Los Angeles and sent 140 city managers and officials to Japan. "This was something that New York City might not have done on its own," says Diane M. Coffey, 58, who was Mayor Koch's chief of staff at the time. "The Fund, and Mary, are not afraid to take risks."

In 1990, McCormick became president of the Fund. Since then, its budget has quadrupled to $22 million, and new branches have been created. Such branches include the Center for Internet Innovation, the Center on Municipal Government Performance (which includes the project that involves Casio handheld computers), and the Youth Development Institute (a national leader in providing assistance to school-community collaborations as well as building consensus around and disseminating best practices of effective youth work). The Incubator Program provides administrative, financial, and technical support to 20 new nonprofit and government projects.

Open Systems -- The Impact of a "Yes Person"

Surrounded by a half-dozen FCNY technology specialists in a conference room, McCormick is considering the various kinds of computers and Internet access that the Fund could deploy in homes and community centers in Washington Heights, a section of upper Manhattan with a substantial population of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. The neighborhood will be a pilot site for E-CommunityConnect, an FCNY project that will provide training for local residents in how to run servers and how to produce and maintain their own Web sites.

As for access, 56-K modems could be hamstrung by the area's old phone lines. Although 28-K modems are cheaper, they might put limitations on the service's design. Internet appliances would be easier for computer neophytes to use if they could be configured so that users could save homework assignments or household budgets locally. McCormick listens and considers the options. "Mary works rigorously to involve everyone," says Coffey. "Everyone feels a sense of ownership in the project. She's adept at getting people to agree and to work toward a common objective."

One time, for example, McCormick brought together 400 officials and staffers from the city's Department of Corrections, Department of Health, Health and Hospitals Corp., and Human Resources Administration to discuss how those agencies could work together to stop the spread of the multidrug-resistant strain of tuberculosis that had cropped up in prisons and in city shelters and keep it from turning into an epidemic. They came up with a consolidated-budget request to fight the problem jointly, as well as a direct-observation monitoring program that ensures that people who have the disease take the prescribed medicine over a course of several months.