Dale Coudert has, for decades, been lauded for her outstanding community leadership and her success in bringing competing voices together in dialogue. While she has amassed many academic and professional accomplishments, it is perhaps her commitment to advancing the possibilities of our shared humanity for which she is most admired.
An alumnus of Northwestern University, Ms. Coudert’s professional journey has been rich with noteworthy roles, including serving as a real estate broker with Cross and Brown Company in New York, specializing in commercial and investment real estate; a broker with Brown Harris Stevens in Palm Beach; and as director of marketing for Lafer Management in New York, a hedge fund. Ms. Coudert additionally held the title of director with Hospital Tak Company in Long Island. A lifelong learner, her academic experiences have also included studies at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Through the years Ms. Coudert’s professional achievements have unfolded concurrently while extending her energy and insights in support of myriad public service efforts. She has been active on the boards of directors of the New York Drama League, the Metropolitan Opera Club, and the Kennedy Center. Other community roles that she has fervently assumed include serving as a regent at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and as a board member for the Ecumenical Group, Temple of Understanding. A lifetime member of the Aspen Institute, Ms. Coudert has also been aligned with several other civic organizations one of which was serving as an original founder, with John Wallach, of Seeds of Peace, an initiative which united Palestinian, Egyptian and Israeli boys in a camp in Maine and later included girls. She is currently a member of the International Women’s Forum and on the board of directors at the Palm Beach Zoo and Conservation Society.
Believing that open dialogue and diverse opinions are the most effectual route for reaching thoughtful conclusions, in 2001 Ms. Coudert founded the Coudert Institute along with Robert Monks. A non-partisan, non-ideological organization designed to tackle ideas and drive positive global change, the institute’s extraordinary programming has, for two decades, united the Palm Beach community through dialogue and learning. Featuring luminaries from the worlds of finance, medicine, education, science, the arts and the humanities, each season the institute’s inspired discourse reminds us that perhaps what we all have in common are the questions.
While Ms. Coudert is perhaps best known for her achievements with the institute which bears her name, it is her groundbreaking work in the 1970s, as part of the team which established the First Women’s Bank in New York, which she regards as the capstone of her legacy. In the early 1970s, in response to her own personal solvency challenges as a single mother, Ms. Coudert not only raised the possibility of financial institutions extending credit independently to women, but also helped steer that prospect to fruition resulting in the newly formed bank’s extension of credit lending to accommodate women of all backgrounds. These efforts subsequently nudged the laws in the state of New York, thus granting equity distribution to women. During this period, she lectured extensively, across the globe, on the topics of investment real estate in America and banking.
A passionate conversant, Dale Coudert sees the potential in every individual, and she enjoys nothing more than sharing stories of her connections made through a lifetime of open dialogue. She looks forward to chronicling these experiences in writing, through memoir, in the years to come. Ms. Coudert is the mother of two daughters, the grandmother of four young women and stepmother to two daughters. Presently, she makes her home in Aspen and Palm Beach.