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."
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.
"Amazement to joy, incredulity, stunned silence, denial -- they are all different, " he said.
Fellowships have been awarded since 1981 to "celebrate the creative individual in our midst, " the program's Web site says. There is no application process. Candidates are nominated anonymously. Then a selection committee researches the nominees, which can take six months or six years, Socolow said. The foundation names 20 to 25 recipients a year.
"We do not explain why we choose the people, " Socolow said. The selection is made after looking at candidates' work, reading what has been written about them and talking to peers and friends "to form an opinion on how much creativity we see, " he said.
"We are really betting on the future, " Socolow said. "They know far better than we what to do with the money. We hand it off in confidence."
Past MacArthur fellows include artists, inventors, scientists and educators. Among this year's class, announced Monday, are a robot-maker, a ragtime pianist, an archaeological illustrator and a businessman working to free political prisoners in China.
Gottlieb, the daughter of a Filipino father and Aleut mother, began her ascent through Southcentral Foundation in Seldovia, where she grew up and was the agency's local health representative. In 1987, she and her then husband moved to Anchorage so he could study. Southcentral hired her to answer phones, and she enrolled at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
At the time, health care for Anchorage-area Alaska Natives was meager, "provided by an indifferent government, " she said. It took days to see an Indian Health Service doctor; emergency room visits often required hours of waiting.
But all over Alaska, tribal health organizations were taking advantage of a change in federal law that allowed them to assume health service functions, such as dentistry or optometry. They could also seek grants to supplement their Indian Health Service funding.
Southcentral Foundation took advantage of the opportunities, and Gottlieb, who became president in 1991, began exerting her creativity. "When we were able to assume our own management, we had a lot of freedom to move and design. And we had our own motivation" -- improving day-to-day health care for their own people.
Now the agency employs 1,200 people and operates more than a dozen programs, from outpatient clinics to a primary care facility on Tudor Road. Alaska Natives no longer have to wait in line for health care but can get in to see their family doctor the same day they call for an appointment, Gott- lieb said.
To the health service, Southcentral's growth has been "a very big deal, " Mandregan said. By using grants to supplement its federal funding, Gottlieb's agency has accomplished more than the health service could have, he said.
Gottlieb said she believes health care must extend deep into the Native community and has used her imagination to achieve her goals. About 10 years ago, she said, she failed to persuade a group of Native leaders to support a new project tackling the sensitive subject of child sexual abuse.
After thinking it over, she came back. "This time, I said, 'We're calling out the warriors. I need you as tribal men like you were in the old days, when you were willing to risk your lives for your wives and children and willing to step forward to defend and protect us.' You could feel it -- everything changed. They said, 'What do you need?' "
That became the Family Wellness Warriors Initiative, one of her favorite projects at Southcentral Foundation, she said. Others include Dena A Coy, a home where pregnant women can live as they go through substance-abuse treatment; Pathway Home, a residential treatment center for troubled adolescents, particularly Alaska Natives; and programs to assist elders, infants and those with persistent mental illness.
Friends have enjoyed watching Gottlieb succeed, said Diane Kaplan, executive director of the Rasmuson Foundation and one of those who nominated her.
"Kathy may be a health care bureaucrat, but she's a true entrepreneur in spirit of J.D. (MacArthur), " who would have appreciated Gottlieb's abilities, Kaplan said. To have risen from receptionist to president is "a great story. She's really quite a human being."
Gottlieb cried when the MacArthur foundation called. Luckily, she said, she has several months to decide what to do with the prize. But it won't be a ticket out of the health-care bureaucracy, she said.
"I love what I do, " Gottlieb said. "(The $500,000) is a bonus on top of what I'm doing."
Daily News reporter Joel Gay can be reached at jgay@adn.com or at 257-4310.
Katherine Gottlieb, MacArthur Fellowship winner
1980-82: City of Seldovia council member
1980-87: Director, corporate secretary Seldovia Native Association
1987: Receptionist, Southcentral Foundation
1990: Bachelor of arts in business administration from Alaska Pacific University
1990-91: Member of Alaska USA Magadan Medical Exchange Program
1991: Named president and chief executive officer of Southcentral Foundation
1995: Master of business administration from Alaska Pacific University. Also established fetal alcohol syndrome program for pregnant women and their dependent children.
1999: Southcentral Foundation assumes co-management of Alaska Native Medical Center with Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, making Alaska the first state to have all health facilities for Natives managed by Natives.
2001: Established Pathway home residential program to help Native teens with substance abuse, behavioral and mental health problems.
2004: Wins MacArthur Award
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