Backstory: A giver behind the giving

After 12 hours in a dusty Land Rover, being bumped and jostled on a dirt road deep in the Senegal bush, Judy Miller stepped out into a remote village to meet with local chieftains. It had been a difficult drive, and she didn't know what to expect.

As director of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, which bestows $1.5 million annually to an organization working to alleviate human suffering, her mission was simply to evaluate one of the nonprofit nominees for the world's most generous humanitarian prize.

This Senegal program had been working to improve the lives of women – and this was an issue long at the center of Ms. Miller's own personal and professional life. So – despite her physical exhaustion and the overwhelming press of hospitality (a "Welcome, Judy Miller" banner, and women and children dancing and singing in greeting) – she was searching for subtle ways she could emphasize the importance of dignity for women.

An opportunity to link her long-held, hard-fought values with the cultural traditions of her hosts arose as imams pointed out a new village amenity. "When I heard they had just dedicated a new well for the women in the villages so they wouldn't have to walk miles to retrieve water, I complimented them for following Islam," says Miller. She was familiar with Islamic culture, having been one of the first Western women to work openly in Saudi Arabia. And when she mentioned surasfrom the Koran, which praised the dignity of women, the leaders beamed.

As a lifelong Republican activist and pioneering female executive, Miller doesn't fit the stereotype of a humanitarian worker. While she does travel throughout the developing world, from the slums of Lima, Peru, to leper colonies in India, she has a reputation as one of the most skilled executives on the often-unseen side of humanitarian work. She's a master, say colleagues, of the organizational efficiency and political subtlety often lacking in efforts to help the poor.

Indeed, most experts in the field say, the Hilton Prize is one of the premier awards of its kind because of Miller's efforts to make it more than a $1.5 million handout. Since 1997, she has been refining the evaluation process that whittles down 250 nominations to about 15 per year. She coordinates an on-site evaluation process that results in a 40-page assessment of each nominee. Miller herself usually conducts three site visits a year. Assessments are then given to an independent jury that, through Miller's efforts, includes Nobel laureates, former government ministers, and other world leaders.

Miller has also turned the awards dinner into a day-long global humanitarian symposium that includes decisionmakers from international government and human rights organizations.

"I really admire that she's able to engage the people we are trying to bring to our [awards] dinners – the Vaclav Havels of the world, the Dalai Lamas of the world, people with extreme visibility who would typically be hard to entice to be a part of what we are doing," says Steven Hilton, president and CEO of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which administers the prize. "And Judy has a way of approaching them, because of her personality, that encourages them to want to be a part of what we're doing."

Indeed, the strength of Miller's personality, which combines the qualities of a tough, dogged executive with the values of a committed feminist and humanitarian, lies in her own quiet dignity. Diminutive in size, her hair a blond-tinted gray after nearly seven decades, she walks gently and deliberately, belying her tenacity.

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