Elise Buik was born and raised in the South, but after 17 years in Los Angeles, she says, “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.” After moving to the city in 1992 and discovering that “I didn’t really care if I sold another computer system,” she left her job at a software company and joined United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where she now serves as president and chief executive officer. Read more about Buik below.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. My alarm buzzing at me. Then I let my dog out and wake up my two boys.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. A Ryan Adams CD.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. Passion.
Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. My boys’ faces when there’s just this unadulterated joy at the little moments in life.
Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. A mom, tired, committed, passionate, inspired. I probably need to change the order.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A doctor.
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. Lately I’ve been drinking fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and vodka.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. The occasional massage. It feels very extravagant but much needed, maybe once or twice a year.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. I’d like to take a journey with my husband and my kids to Italy, because my heritage is Italian and I’d like to share that with them.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I’d like to have the luxury to volunteer and give money away on a full-time basis.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. My Italian grandparents, they have a family bungalow on the beach in Florida. Being with them and swimming and cooking pasta – those are fond, fond memories.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I probably have two. One is these great drawings of my children when they were babies. One of my best friends took their photos and drew them. The other is a charm bracelet my grandmother left me, which has a charm from every country she had traveled to. When I was a little girl she would tell me the stories of those trips.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. That I’m going to have balance in my life, and I end up working all the time.
Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. My favorite pair of house slippers.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead with whom you would most like to have a drink?
A. It would have to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Although his legacy gets defined pretty much in terms of race, I think it was truly a boundary-crossing social movement. I think it would be fascinating to get his perspective on today.
To read about the homelessness panel which Buik moderated, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.