Photo by Scott Foust COVER STORY here is a lot to unpack about Sybil Francis, so let’s get the parochial stuff out of the way. She grew up in a bilingual family of academics, speaking French at home and spending summers living with her grandparents outside of Paris. She is an accomplished flutist, a nuclear weapons expert and the wife of ASU president Michael Crow. Despite her extraordinary background and résumé (more on that soon), she believes her most significant work is happening here and now. “When I present our findings, people get so emotional. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you for saying that,’” she said. 30 | FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE BY KAREN WERNER A conversation with Sybil Francis, chair, president & CEO of Center for the Future of Arizona T ‘There Is Power in Positivity’

FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE | 31 Francis, the chair, president and CEO of Center for the Future of Arizona, is a kind of pied piper of positivity. Buoyed by partnerships and polls, she is ready to show how data and our shared public values can lead people together to create positive change. Francis is extremely effective when she talks about her lifetime of optimism. “There is power in positivity. I have experienced it,” she said. In her youth, Francis harbored dreams of becoming a professional flutist, dedicating hours every day to her craft. Her talents led to some prestigious music camps, but when it was time for college, she decided to study chemistry instead. “When it came down to it, I became very passionate about doing good in the world,” she said, noting that environmental issues motivated her to study science. After graduating from Oberlin College, Francis went to work on Capitol Hill, serving in a variety of leadership roles, including as a senior policy director for a member of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she played a key role in shaping energy, environmental and national security policy. It was a dream job, but six years in, Francis craved something else. “I thought, this is starting to feel a little repetitive. I want to go train my brain,” she said. Interested in national defense issues as well, she enrolled in the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program at MIT, then just the fifth woman in the program’s history. “There are some quarters in which I’m known as a nuclear weapons expert, particularly the history of nuclear weapons and how our U.S. system of nuclear weapons evolved,” she said. After earning her Ph.D., Francis put another vision into action. “I had always dreamed about going to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. There’s the Capitol, and then there’s the White House,” she said. So Francis went to work down the street from her old job as a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). “That’s actually when I met my husband,” she said. Surprisingly open and down to earth, Francis recounts how she met the man who would go on to be named #44 on Fortune ’s 2019 list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders. “When I had just started at OSTP, it came to my attention that there was a conference going on at Columbia University about the impact of Vannevar Bush, who was considered a godfather of science and technology policy,” Francis said. (Bush made an appearance in the movie, “Oppenheimer,” played by Matthew Modine.) Given Francis’s interests, the conference seemed fascinating. She drummed up the courage to ask to attend, a choice that “changed my entire life,” she said. Francis went to the conference, which Crow was leading, and heard him speak. The intellectual bond was intense. “I thought, my gosh, a kindred spirit in terms of how we think,” she said. After she returned to D.C., Crow sent her a handwritten note and a copy of his book. She responded with a copy of her dissertation. “And thus, love was born,” she laughed. Francis knows how unique their love story is. “We are just geeks,” she said. “With big hearts, though.” Those hearts propelled them to marriage, a move to New York and the birth of their daughter, Alana. Then, in 2002, Crow got the transformative opportunity to come to Arizona and lead ASU as its next president. Francis (far left) with sister Corinna-Barbara and grandmother Alice Louvet in France Francis with former boss and U.S. Rep. George E. Brown Jr. in 1986. It was a significant moment in her career to receive unexpectedly high praise from the no-nonsense representative.