“I think a lot about having time to give back to the community,” Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive of Kraft Foods of the US, told the Financial Times’s Women at the Top magazine recently, dreaming of a still-far off day when she retires.
“Giving back was instilled in me by my father at a young age,” Ted Turner, CNN’s founder, told the Giving Pledge, set up by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to persuade the rich to give the majority of their wealth to good causes.
“Giving back to the community” is the way business people often describe their philanthropy. It is an arresting phrase because it suggests that their careers have involved taking something away from the community.