Executive Sets an Example for Giving

Like most executives, Duke Potts is a self-proclaimed workaholic. Technicolor’s senior vice president of manufacturing arrives at work around 6 a.m. and goes home 12 hours later.

But unlike most executives, the 52-year-old Thousand Oaks resident makes sure to carve out an hour each day to raise money for local charities, particularly those that work with children.

Having collected hundreds of thousands of dollars for community organizations, Potts is among the leaders of Ventura County’s fund-raising efforts, said Dave Graska, executive director of the local branch of the Boy Scouts of America, which honored Potts last fall as executive of the year.

“When he gets involved in a project, it’s going to be fantastically successful,” Graska said. “Did you ever see the movie ‘The Terminator?’ That’s Duke Potts. The guy is absolutely relentless. Every now and then you get one whose eyes glow. Duke’s eyes glow.”

Potts has helped raise $100,000 for the Big Brother/Big Sister program of Ventura County and about $40,000 for its parent organization, the Committee for Neglected and Abused Children.

Last month, the Sherwood Country Club Children’s Holiday Golf Classic, which Potts chaired, raised more than $200,000 for the Ventura County Medical Resource Foundation and the June Ebensteiner Hospice Foundation. Potts has also helped raise between $10,000 and $20,000 for the Boy Scouts.

“The support that we get from Technicolor means 100 boys a year get Scouting who probably wouldn’t,” Graska said. Potts’ example has created a “multiplier effect” among county businesses, said Allyson Golld, who heads the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club.

“Duke Potts has not only been financially generous to the Boys & Girls Club, but he has also represented a call to action for other companies,” she said. “Duke has stood before them and spoken about why corporate leaders should sponsor our organization.”

Mike Silacci, executive director of Pacific Bell’s Ventura public affairs department and a member of several nonprofit boards, has never met Potts. But he’s heard all about him.

“He’s our role model,” Silacci said. “He exemplifies a businessperson giving back to the community.”

Potts, a meticulous, soft-spoken man with a disarmingly easygoing manner, is humble about his philanthropic work. He often speaks of himself in the plural, seeming to avoid taking credit for what he sees as the efforts of many.

Take, for example, his comment about balancing his regular workload for Technicolor--overseeing all North American videotape and DVD operations--with his fund-raising work: “We just try to squeeze it in whenever.”

“He’s real funny when people compliment him on this,” said his wife, Andrea. “I don’t know if he gets embarrassed. He doesn’t want people to make too big a deal of it. I think when he says ‘we,’ he’s probably speaking as the company as a whole, but I think he’s just being modest. He’s the one really doing it.”

For Potts, squeezing fund-raising into his schedule means calling companies on his mobile phone during trips to Michigan, Toronto and Mexico, where he often travels to oversee Technicolor’s manufacturing operations.

In a telephone interview from Michigan on Thursday, Potts said he spent most of the four-hour flight from Los Angeles writing letters to executives on his laptop computer, urging them to participate in a charity golf tournament.

The motivation comes from his philosophy about children, especially the less fortunate.

“It’s not their fault they were born into a poor family,” he said, speaking generally about the children he seeks to help. “Most kids that are in trouble didn’t have any money.”

He also enjoys a sense of satisfaction when he sees the results of his work. “When you walk [into a hospital] and see babies the size of your hand, that they are alive because somebody bought equipment for a neonatal center, that’s a good feeling,” Potts said.

Potts is among a number of motivated and prolific fund-raisers in the county’s business community, said Kate McLean, president of the Ventura County Community Foundation, which, among other things, channels private funds to nonprofit groups. Others--from banks, utility companies and commercial interests--have been about as active as Potts, said McLean, who knows Potts by reputation only.

“This community has been very fortunate in having a number of business leaders that understand that by increasing the quality of life in the community, it increases the quality of life for their employees,” she said.

The efforts are most welcome at a time when nonprofits are on the rise throughout the county and 1,300 agencies find themselves increasingly competing for cash. The county doesn’t have solid figures on new nonprofits, but the number has increased statewide by 66% in the last 15 years, according to the Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County.

But while some executives grumble about repeatedly being hit up for cash or time, Potts plows forward.

“I remember when I asked him to head up our auction for next year. He looked at me and thought about it,” Graska said. “My sense was that his good sense was telling him, no, he didn’t have time, but his heart was telling him to do it. He followed his heart.”