Many in the Atlanta community are mourning the death Saturday of Anne Sterchi, the longtime executive director of the J.B. Fuqua Foundation , who distributed charitable funds to countless education, health, and human and social services projects across the city.
Sterchi, 69, died Saturday morning at Piedmont Hospital after complications associated with a viral infection, said her brother, Kent Sterchi, of Orlando. She is survived by Kent Sterchi and another brother.
Sterchi was the “right-hand person” for Atlanta businessman and philanthropist J.B. Fuqua in vetting nonprofits for his private foundation, close friend Beth Finnerty said. She said Sterchi worked for the family foundation, established in 1970, for decades and was an integral part of the philanthropic and nonprofit community in Atlanta.
“She has made a huge impact on so many parts of our city. In the nonprofit world, in the arts community, the health care community,” Finnerty, the president of mental health nonprofit Skyland Trail, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She was very involved in the giving. She would get to know the nonprofits they were giving to, and that’s how a lot of us became her friends.”