Reprinted from the Anchorage Daily

Alaska Native Wins MacArthur Prize

By Joel Bay
Anchorage Daily News Correspondent

A national philanthropic organization best known for giving out $500,000 "genius awards" to artists and inventors has included an Alaska Native health care executive in its ranks this year. Peers and friends say it should be no surprise that Katherine Gottlieb, president of Southcentral Foundation, is one of 23 this year -- and the first Alaskan ever -- to win a MacArthur Fellowship.

They describe the 52-year-old Gottlieb, who went to night school as she rose from her agency's receptionist to chief executive officer, as a visionary who also happens to run a $118 million agency that delivers health care service to 40,000 Alaska Natives.

"She just doesn't quit coming up with ideas," said Chris Mandregan, the Alaska-area director of the Indian Health Service, which works closely with Gottlieb. "She's been willing to talk about issues that don't often get talked about and then turn them into programs that work."

Katherine Gottlieb
(Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)

Gottlieb was honored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for helping transform a slow and cumbersome medical bureaucracy into a patient-centered system of health care tailored to the needs of Alaska Natives.

Each fellow receives $100,000 a year for five years, which can be used however he or she wishes. But reached in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Gottlieb said she has no idea how to spend her windfall.

"I'm still in shock," she said. "I still think it's a dream."

It's not, said MacArthur Fellow Program director Daniel Socolow. That's not an unusual reaction among fellowship winners when he tells them they've just won half a million dollars, no strings attached.