By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—It is a coincidence, rather than a prerequisite, but two well-known members of the Jewish community being saluted for their contributions to San Diego's business and civic life both changed their careers before they rose to their current levels of prominence.

Murray L. Galinson currently serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the California State College and University system as well as board chairman of San Diego National Bank. When he initially came to San Diego from Minnesota he was a professor at California  Western Law School—a position he left in order to become deputy campaign manager in the 1984 presidential bid of former Vice President Walter Mondale. LEAD San Diego plans to confer on him its 2006 Morgan Award, named for longtime San Diego columnist and editor Neil Morgan.

  Irwin M. Jacobs                                      Murray L. Galinson

Irwin M. Jacobs is the chairman and recently-retired chief executive officer of Qualcomm, the company he co-founded with Andrew Viterbi. Today Qualcomm is a giant in cell phone technology, having developed and patented the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) process. When Jacobs was a student at Cornell University, however, he enrolled in the School of Hotel Management on the advice of his high school counselor. He later switched to electrical engineering, a career that brought him to San Diego as a professor at UCSD.  LEAD San Diego will honor Jacobs and members of his CDMA team with its Economic Opportunity Award in recognition of the fact that Qualcomm has become a major employer in the San Diego area.

LEAD San Diego is celebrating its 25th anniversary and counts 1,500 San Diegans among its graduates.  The organization provides up-and-coming leaders in a variety of fields to an insider's view of San Diego. One Thursday a month for the period of nine months, LEAD arranges for all-day field trips to various institutions in San Diego, where panels are conducted with leaders in the field.

Kristy Gregg, who will chair the $125-per-person reception and dessert presentation June 6 at which Galinson, Jacobs and six other honorees will receive Visionary awards, recalled that she went through the program herself in 1996 when she was an executive assistant to Galinson. Since then she has risen to San Diego National Bank's  vice presidency for marketing and community relations.

Participants, or their companies, pay $2,000 to go through the class which now attracts between 50 and 60 students per year. Gregg, who today is a LEAD San Diego board member, said her class spent one Thursday learning at Donovan State Prison learning from law enforcement officials about their leadership challenges. In subsequent months, the class went to meet with officials of Tijuana, Mexico, the sprawling city facing San Diego across the border; to KGTV 
                                                                                                                              Kristy Gregg

(Channel 10) television, Qualcomm, and to a  variety of other venues. Before engaging in the classes some people may think the understand the workings of the community, but they come away from the course having far deeper insight, she said.

LEAD San Diego graduates network not only with classmates but also with other LEADers, whom they can keep in touch with through the organization's website.

Galinson was nominated for the award by Judy McDonald, who knows the bank chairman through her philanthropic work on the Parker Foundation board.  She also is active with Galinson on the NTC Foundation, an organization that is overseeing the renovation of San Diego's former Naval Training Center and its re-use by civic and arts groups.  But, as one who considers Galinson her mentor, Gregg also has some insight into the man's leadership qualities. 

Seventeen years ago, when she interviewed with Galinson to become his assistant, "I said I don't know anything about banking, and he said that he didn't either to begin with, that you have to know whom to ask."  She watched the seemingly effortless way, Galinson made business contacts, raised money for charities, participated in such civic organizations as the Police Review Board, and lent his support, and financial backing, to such national Democrats as Mondale, President Bill Clinton, and Joseph Biden.

"The award is given to someone who has provided a lifetime of quality community leadership to our region, and it is hard to find anyone better than Murray," she said.

Jacobs was nominated by two Qualcomm employees, Lee Wills-Irvine, staffing manager, and Anita Gomes, a senior marketing manager who also serves as LEAD San Diego's board chair. Wills-Irvine is a 2001 graduate of LEAD San Diego and she remembers with fondness all-day seminars at such venues as the San Diego County Water Authority and the Center for the Performing Arts in Escondido.

Coming up on her ninth year with the company, Wills-Irvine said she was always impressed by how accessible Jacobs made himself to employees.  "You'd see him in the halls and he was always ready to stop and talk," she said.  In nominating Jacobs, it was not only with the fact in mind that Qualcomm has provided 9,500 jobs in San Diego, but also because it has an extensive corporate giving program with special emphasis on improving education in the fields of math and science.

From their personal fortune, Jacobs and his wife Joan have also made large contributions to numerous civic causes—perhaps the best remembered being a $120 million gift that took the San Diego Symphony from near bankruptcy to the kind of stability that permits wide-ranging musical innovation. Like the Galinsons, the Jacobs also are generous and frequent contributors to numerous Jewish causes in San Diego County.

Other honorees will include Scott Peters, president of the San Diego City Council (2006 Graduate of the Year); Margaret Iwanaga-Penrose, president & CEO, Union of Pan Asian Communities (Diversity); the Joe & Vi Jacobs Family, Jacobs Family Foundation (community collaboration); Dorothy Leonard, community volunteer (Quality of Life); Blair L. Sadler, president & CEO, Children's Hospital and Health Center (regional stewardship), and Richard Kiy, president & CEO, International Community Foundation (Cross-Border Region-Building).

Perhaps because LEAD San Diego has insight into how leaders like to make their time count, the 5:30 p.m.-7 p.m. event at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina on Tuesday, June 6—California's primary election day—won't involve a long sit-down dinner.  Instead, said Gregg, most of the time will be spent at a cocktail hour at which attendees will munch hors d'ouevres as they schmooze—A Yiddish term for meeting and talking that Gregg learned from Galinson.  Then, there will be a short video shown during the awards presentation ending an hour before the election polls close.