Now Cahn has come to the Markle Foundation to head its new Interactive Media for Children program area. Markle has been involved with kids since the late 1960s and was an early funder of Sesame Street. As the digital world goes mainstream, Markle wants to play just as pivotal a role in the future. "Our obligation to children requires us to inspire a vision for national media," says Zoë Baird. "There is a whole new opportunity to create interactive content in a way that producers can use it. Alice has an ability to pick winners and an ability to understand how kids might respond."

Cahn hasn't been at Markle for very long (she started last May), but already she's making her presence felt. "For the first time in my career, I'm able to give people money instead of asking for money," she says. "And I'm recognizing that we need to be thinking as an industry in an entirely new way. This is an opportunity to avoid repeating the mistakes that we made with children's television."

It sounds a bit strange to hear Cahn talk about the foibles of children's television, since she's been one of its most prominent players. A Long Island native, Cahn was teaching seventh and eighth grade in the late 1970s when she first realized the power of media to teach. So she went back to school for a master's degree in educational technology. She worked in industrial training before moving to public television, where she became director of children's programming at the Public Broadcasting Service and helped put such hits as Arthur, Teletubbies, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, and Wishbone on the air. Just before coming to Markle, she spent two years as president of the film, television, and video division of the Children's Television Workshop, home of Sesame Street. She has two children: one is 21; the other is 2.

While Cahn thinks that the right kinds of television shows can help children learn, she also believes that TV, as a mass medium, has limitations. "We burdened television with so many agendas that it never really caught on as the educational tool that it has the opportunity to be," she says. "New media has an opportunity to do something that television never quite accomplished: Offer a seamless blending of education and entertainment." And that's why Cahn has come to Markle. She wants to help the foundation lead the way in figuring out what new media actually does for children. Then she wants to use the foundation's capital as seed funding for products that have the most promise.

For all of the interactive CD-ROMs and Web sites out there, there is little conclusive research on what impact media has on children. That lack of information presents both a problem and an opportunity for Markle, which wants to help create a national research agenda on that topic. Says Cahn: "I don't think that we've scratched the surface as to how helpful technology can be." So she is creating a Web site that will consolidate existing research in a way that enables groups to communicate with one another. The foundation also hosted a conference last October, called "Kids' TV Goes Digital," to bring together people in the online and television businesses to talk about digital media. Markle is also trying to involve parents by getting them to think more about the types of interactive experiences their kids are having. "Parents get a lot of information about what not to let their kids do," Cahn says. "We want to give parents tools to make decisions, rather than to narrow their options."

At the same time, Cahn is getting ready to award grants for new interactive toys and programs that she feels are going to help kids have fun learning. What's most critical, she says, is that the ability of digital technology to personalize a child's experience be handled in the right way. Although a host of products claim to create a custom experience for users, Cahn doesn't think that anyone has unlocked the secret. "That's what changes the creative process," she says, banging the table for emphasis. "Let's say you're a writer of children's material. If you're crafting a narrative, and you're building characters, and you have a message and a story that you want to tell, what does it do to your development process if you know that 7-year-olds have the opportunity to change that story, maybe based on their own inquiry and their own interests and their own needs?"

Whatever Cahn does decide to fund, don't expect her to write a check and go away. "We're annoyingly involved in our people's projects," Cahn says. Annoying for some, perhaps -- but lots of fun for a woman to whom work is really play -- and for a foundation whose work is to make a difference fast.

Jennifer Reingold (jreingold@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in New York. Contact Alice Cahn (acahn@markle.org), Allen Hammond (allen@wri.org), Paul Meyer (paul@ipko.org), or Julia Moffett (jmoffett@markle.org) by email. Learn more about the Markle Foundation on the Web (www.markle.org).

Sidebar: Foundation For Change