Steidle Wallace, Gretchen

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Steidle Wallace, Gretchen

PERSONAL:

Daughter of a naval officer; married. Education: University of Virginia, B.A., 1996; Dartmouth College, M.B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NH. Office—Global Grassroots, 1 Main St., Unit 5, P.O. Box 281, Lyme, NH 03768. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Social entrepreneur. PMD International, Inc., international project finance associate, 1996-99; Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, Hanover, NH, cofounder; Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Social Entrepreneur Associates director; Youth Venture, director, until 2003; Global Grassroots, Lyme, NH, founder and president, 2004—. Producer of the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback.

WRITINGS:

(With brother, Brian Steidle) The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, Public Affairs (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gretchen Steidle Wallace is a humanitarian aid worker. Growing up in a military family, Wallace lived in numerous countries around the world, witnessing firsthand the poverty and underdeveloped conditions in certain locations. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia in 1996 and began working with PMD International, Inc., in international project finance. She worked in this banking position helping poorer countries fund infrastructure development projects until 1999. At that point she began working on a master of business administration degree at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. While there she helped found what later became the Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, a group that attempts to instill a sense of ethics, service, and corporate responsibility in business leaders. After she graduated, she began working for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an international nonprofit group that advances social entrepreneurship. While with this nongovernmental organization, or NGO, she served as the director of Youth Venture until 2003. The organization focused on young people and helping them develop their social ventures.

Wallace founded Global Grassroots in Lyme, New Hampshire, in 2004. She found inspiration and a sense of cause after hearing her brother's tales of his experience in Sudan and her own work in South Africa where she found that a lack of women's financial and sexual rights put them in greater danger danger of contracting HIV and AIDS. The organization primarily focuses on empowering women in postconflict environments around the world. In 2005 she initiated the organization's involvement in helping women in refugee camps after the ethnic killings in Sudan. Wallace's work there brought her experiences together with those of her brother, Brian Steidle, who had been working in the area with the African Union. She went on to produce a documentary of the story, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

In 2007 Wallace wrote The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur with her brother. Primarily his memoir, the account details Brian's experience in Darfur, Sudan, as an unarmed military observer with the African Union. After the fragile cease-fire was negotiated, ethnic Arab nomadic tribes of Sudanese, called the janjaweed, or "the devil on the horse," began killing and torturing ethnic black Sudanese living in the Darfur region. Although the killing is primarily on ethnic lines, many suspect that the lands are prime for putting up oil pipelines, which are predominantly controlled by Arab-Sudanese. The government, also largely Arab, ignores and denies any killings are taking place, despite accounts from reporters, victims, and Steidle and Wallace. The memoir tells of houses being burned, oftentimes with the inhabitants still inside; those trying to escape are chased down and tortured or killed. Ears, eyes, and hands are severed in the process. The janjaweed, as well as the Sudanese national army, loot the stores for any valuables before they are burned and food supplies for victimized villages are destroyed. Steidle released pictures of these events to the New York Times in hopes of bringing the issue to greater international attention.

Reviews for the book were mixed. Douglas R. Cobb, writing in Curled Up with a Good Book, called the book an "excellent memoir and account of the genocide in Darfur." Cobb added that "the book is as gripping and page-turning as any novel." In a National Catholic Reporter article, Jok Mardut Jok noted that "the story is as compelling as it is devastating." The reviewer concluded: "Mr. Steidle and Ms. Wallace juxtapose the government propaganda against the images of genocide and allow the reader to be the judge. They persuade us that this is not a question of bias versus a balanced analysis." Tara McKelvey, writing in the New York Times Book Review, thought that "Steidle's heart is in the right place," but called the stories related in the book "jarring" and "unsettling." Mary C. Allen, in a Library Journal review, commented that "this horrifying memoir … grips you in the horrors of genocide and of international inaction." In a Biography article, Gerald Caplan found the memoir "revealing" but "devoid of any political analysis." A contributor to Publishers Weekly thought that the memoir "effectively channels an idealistic, adventuresome young man's growing frustration and horror in the face of ongoing crimes against humanity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Biography, summer, 2007, Gerald Caplan, review of The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, p. 446.

Books, August 11, 2007, Kai Maristed, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 10.

Daily Variety, August 7, 2007, Robert Koehler, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 5.

Film Journal International, September, 2007, Daniel Eagan, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 61.

Hartford Courant, October 12, 2007, review of The Devil Came on Horseback.

Library Journal, April 15, 2007, Mary C. Allen, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 105.

National Catholic Reporter, May 25, 2007, Jok Mardut Jok, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 4; August 3, 2007, Jok Mardut Jok, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 15.

New York Times Book Review, September 2, 2007, Tara McKelvey, review of The Devil Came on Horseback.

Publishers Weekly, February 26, 2007, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 75.

Variety, January 29, 2007, Robert Koehler, review of The Devil Came on Horseback, p. 45.