Sara Miller McCune, the founder, publisher and executive chairman of SAGE Publications, has defied the odds for 45 years to prevail as a woman and a private owner in a field dominated by men and mergers to become the grande dame of academic publishing and a philanthropic diva for education, social justice and the performing arts.

The girl from a brick row house in Queens who learned to read at age 4 and skipped a year in junior high school, who fell in love with publishing in her early 20s and sold a used air conditioner to launch SAGE in 1965, today oversees a global corporation with yearly sales well over $200 million and a work force approaching 1,000 employees on four continents.

“George used to say that a turtle only gets ahead by sticking its neck out,” McCune said, quoting her late husband and business partner. In naming the company after the word for “a very wise person,” she combined the first two letters of their names, “SAra” and “GEorge.”

SAGE today is one of the leading academic publishing houses in the world, and it is the only one founded by a woman, run by a woman and still privately owned — the last of a kind in the industry. The company has headquarters in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and offices in Washington D.C., London, New Delhi, Kolkata, India, and Singapore.

“I am grateful to have seen my dreams larger in reality than I ever imagined they could be,” McCune said. “I am grateful to live in a place and time where learning matters.”

Now McCune has founded Miller-McCune, a national nonprofit magazine and Web site that promise, “Smart journalism. Real solutions.” It could have been a quick and quixotic failure — magazines everywhere were shrinking or folding — but McCune pledged to keep hers afloat for at least five years. Entering its third year, Miller-McCune prints 100,000 magazines and averages 150,000 online viewers every month. The magazine has received national recognition in its short life, including being named one of Magazine Industry News’ “hottest launches” and one of Library Journal‘s 10 Best New Magazines in 2008.

McCune is driven by two desires — to succeed in publishing, and to make the world a better place. In a lifetime of striving, she has found the first goal easier to achieve than the second. But she doesn’t stop trying.

“An awful lot of people are quite happy to swim in the shallows in life. Not Sara,” said Noah benShea, a friend, a poet-philosopher and the best-selling author of 22 books (five of them published by SAGE subsidiary Corwin Press).

“She wants to be fully alive, fully conscious, fully caring and fully responsible in every moment. That’s not easy. She reminds me of the line from the Talmud, ‘You’re not expected to finish the work and neither are you excused from it.’”

Part intellectual, part caring activist and part hard-headed businesswoman, even to her admirers McCune can seem at times receptive and engaging and “one of the guys,” and at times unpredictable and “in your face,” like a tennis pro with a smash serve.

“She’s a very straightforward and direct person, and on another level, she’s a very complicated person,” said Anna DiStefano, the provost at Fielding Graduate University headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., where McCune volunteered as interim president from 1999 to 2000. “It’s an interesting mélange. You never know which of the three identities is going to hold sway. I couldn’t always figure out what she was going to lead with.

“Working for her, you really have to be on your toes. You have to be nimble.”

What stands out about McCune’s childhood is her unwavering self-confidence, the single most important ingredient of her success.

She grew up as the smartest of 18 grandchildren in an extended middle-class Jewish family, moving from Manhattan to the South Bronx and then Queens. From an early age, she was told she could be anything she wanted to be. Her grandmother hoped she wanted to be a lawyer, and her mother hoped she wanted to be an actress like Helen Hayes, the celebrated “First Lady of American Theater.”

“I was a feminist before feminism was written about or people were burning bras,” McCune said. “I was raised believing that I could do anything. And I did believe it.”

She also began reaching out to others as a teenager with B’nai B’rith Girls, a Jewish organization that emphasizes community service. She gave her first speech for the group at age 14. At 19, she was international president.

“The ethical side of Judaism was very important to me and still is,” McCune said. “You don’t just give people food, you teach them to fish or grow their own food. You care about the community.”

McCune took lessons in tap dancing, singing and acting, practiced a Cockney accent, did vaudeville routines, performed in an off-off-Broadway production and had some bit parts on television. But once she started majoring in English at Queens College of the City University of New York, she lost interest in an acting career. She switched from English to political science and, on graduating, took a job at Macmillan. After more than two years there, aware that she had fallen in love with her boss and mentor, Macmillan Vice President George McCune, a married man, she left the country and went to work at Pergamon Press Ltd., the Oxford-based publishing house.

Sara lasted only a year at Pergamon. The publisher, Robert Maxwell , was a notorious womanizer who “made a pass at everything in skirts,” McCune said. She resisted his advances, but she got tired of working in sales rather than marketing. She remembers throwing “a small tantrum” about what she regarded as sloppy writing on the firm’s book jackets.

“This was a culture that believed the books should sell themselves,” McCune said. “They couldn’t pronounce the names of their authors. It wasn’t what I had learned at Macmillan.”

McCune returned to New York and decided to start her own business, just as the men in her family had done. Her father ran a coin-operated laundry business in the basements of New York apartment buildings. One of his brothers ran his own pharmacy, and another had his own law firm and managed the family savings.

“I envied their independence while absorbing with the air at every family gathering that it was perfectly natural to be one’s own boss,” McCune said. “I was perhaps a bit foolhardy, but I had become disenchanted with large-scale publishing houses. …

“My parents were hoping for my marriage, preferably to a nice Jewish doctor or lawyer. My friends in publishing thought that — a month before my 24^th birthday — I might perhaps be too young and inexperienced. But I had nothing to risk and everything to gain.”

As always, she believed in herself. A favorite quote of hers is from Rabbi Hillel, the ancient Jewish scholar: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

On the very evening of the incorporation of SAGE, McCune had drinks with Marilyn Gittell, one of her former political science professors. Gittell complained to McCune that the City University did not have its own press and could not publish Urban Affairs Quarterly, a journal she wanted to launch. The notion of “urban affairs” was utterly new — Gittell believed she may have coined the term — but McCune offered on the spot to publish the journal herself, with Gittell as the editor.

“Maybe it was the scotch,” McCune said.

Shortly before her death earlier this year, Gittell recalled, “Foolishly or not so foolishly, I agreed. I did not think at the time that the journal would be a major success. But Sara is an unbelievable entrepreneur. She had all these big ideas. She moved ahead in the face of obstacles. She found people whose ideas she could develop, and she maintained relationships with them. From the journals came books of collections of articles. She was reading the minds of people teaching the stuff.”

George McCune, who was still at Macmillan, gave McCune the air conditioner she sold to raise half the $500 needed for incorporation.

‘The best of times’

SAGE proved to be the perfect vehicle for McCune’s ambition to run things and promote ideas, no matter how wonky. And because she admired scholarship, she was determined not to let her authors down.

At first, she was the sole employee, working on the side as a part-time publishing consultant. She edited and proofread and traveled around the U.S., meeting social scientists and scouting for books to publish, especially in sociology and politics. She typed out a mailing list to generate subscriptions to her new journal and licked the stamps — and to this day gets a stomach cramp from the taste of the glue.

Then, less than two years into the fledgling business, George McCune, a father of four children ages 1 to 15, left his job at Macmillan and his second wife and married Sara, a partnership that was to last 24 years until his death in 1990. It was a perfect match — a courteous and insightful WASP and a self-styled “Jewish American princess,” both hard-working, intelligent and crazy about books.

“He was definitely the best husband for me that I could have ever imagined or wanted,” Sara said. “Indeed, I still feel that way, which probably explains part of the reason why I never remarried.”

George was tired of New York City, so the couple moved to Beverly Hills in 1966, leaving the children behind. The two youngest later came west to live with them.

George was in charge of the accounting, administration and distribution at SAGE, while Sara oversaw editorial acquisitions and marketing. They worked 80- to 100-hour weeks, made decisions at the dinner table and took trips to academic conferences around the country in search of new authors and readers.

“We were at every sociology convention from the early ’60s onwards,” Sara said. “It was the best of times.”

In a field dominated by stodgy, catalog-bound university presses, the McCunes proved to be more agile at turnaround. They became experts in direct-mail marketing “blasts.” Within just seven years, the McCunes opened an office in London. In 1981, they set up shop in India, long before it became a publishing destination of choice, and they did it in person and not through sales agents. Back in California, they moved SAGE headquarters to Thousand Oaks, not caring that the giants in the industry, their competitors, were all on the East Coast.

The pair took chances on authors, too. One of them was Kathleen Reardon, a newly minted professor in the relatively new field of communication, who met Sara at a conference years ago and pitched an idea for a book on persuasion.

“One of the very first things out of her mouth was, ‘How old are you, 12?’” Reardon recalled. “I didn’t think this was a good start. After my spiel, she said, ‘We don’t publish young authors. You really have to have a track record.’

“I said something I only half believed. I said, ‘You’ll be missing an excellent opportunity if you don’t.’ And Sara just beamed.”

Reardon is now a professor of management at the University of  Southern California Marshall School of Business and the author of nine books, four of them published by SAGE, including the appropriately named Persuasion in Practice.

The McCunes excelled at finding the cutting edge and positioning themselves there quickly. They were open to interdisciplinary studies, and they became the preeminent publishers of books on research methods and evaluation. They hit on the idea for a series of short booklets in the social sciences for $3 apiece, or $10 for four. The Quantitative Applications series, popularly known as the Little Green Books, has sold 2 million copies to date.

“Sara followed the field and sometimes was even ahead of it,” Gittell said.

Making democracy work

A woman of action, McCune did not waste time dreaming but rather spent time making her dreams come true. George, she recalled, was never surprised at how fast the company grew, from sales of $12,000 the first year to $100,000 in 1967 and $250,000 in 1969. After his death, Sara found some five-year projections he had left in a closet on yellow ruled paper, and they were right on target.

Today, SAGE is growing faster than ever. McCune remains the majority owner of her publishing empire, having refused to be swallowed up.

“I have lived through so many rounds of what I call merger mania in the publishing industry,” McCune said. “I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve seen how, inevitably, within a few years, the editorial edge, the editorial focus that was at the heart of one imprint after another succumbed to the lawyers, the accountants, the number crunchers, the analysts, the Wall Street people.”

But even as it has avoided being the prey, SAGE has at times been the predator. Just last year, the company made its largest acquisition, CQ Press, the book publishing division of the Congressional Quarterly, based in Washington, D.C.  CQ’s previous owner, the Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg, Fla., was looking for a buyer because it was facing shrinking revenues at the St. Petersburg Times.

John A. Jenkins, CQ president and publisher, said 2009 was a record year.

“In this economy, it’s a good time to be publishing information about politics,” he said. “There is excitement about Obama, and more people are energized. The mission of CQ Press is to help make democracy work. We look at trends in elections, in politics and governance, and, by making them understandable to the layman, we think we make a difference in how well democracy functions. That’s what Sara Miller McCune has been doing from the outset at SAGE — playing a creative role in society by disseminating teaching and research on a global scale. It was a natural fit.’’

Is SAGE in danger of becoming too large? McCune doesn’t think so.

“Having 1,000 employees is kind of daunting, but at least they’re not all in one place,” she said. “I think people still have a sense that it’s a very collegial organization. You can still get to know people well and feel part of something good.”

Today, SAGE publishes 500 journals of academic research and between 700 and 1,000 new book titles every year, many of them in the social sciences. The company’s journals, books and encyclopedias are largely aimed at the higher-education market and sold to college and university libraries and graduate schools.

Recent SAGE books include such diverse titles as The Handbook of Latino Psychology, Serial Murder, Third Edition, The McDonaldization of Society, Media Violence and Aggression and The End of Television? Among last year’s new journals are Genes & Cancer, Cartilage and The Journal of Primary Care & Community Health.

“What we’ve always tried to do is provide a means by which academics and students can communicate with each other,” McCune said. “I’ve published what George used to call ‘toenail studies’ because editors think it is important. But my own interest personally is the application of research to solving problems, large and small.”

In India, where Sara is well known in academic circles, SAGE has recently begun publishing in languages other than English, working in partnership with locally owned presses.

Company officials say they have the leeway to make long-term investments because they are not beholden to Wall Street.

“Sara hasn’t lost her touch or her willingness to try new ideas and take risks,” said SAGE Chief Executive Officer Blaise Simqu. “If anything, I think Sara calls me out on occasion for being too cautious. She has the most common characteristic of successful entrepreneurs: a combination of vision and an unshakable belief in what she can accomplish. She doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. From my perspective, Sara is a unique blend of a demanding chairperson and one who provides complete freedom to create the company and continue creating.”

Jenkins of CQ Press said, “In a privately held company, the tone for everything that happens is set at the top. Sara’s influence is felt far beyond her physical presence. She’s helping make the world a better place with the knowledge we’ve created. We have the best possible outcome — an owner that shared our vision and doesn’t place the almighty profit above the integrity of our core mission.”

McCune’s estate prohibits the sale of SAGE after her death unless the company loses money for two years in a row — something that has not happened in decades — and the directors can’t turn it around.

“That’s the only thing that can take our independence away,” McCune said. “SAGE is going to continue to be run by publishers. The authors and their ideas, and the privilege of disseminating their ideas, have brought us joy.”

On the world stage

Having long since given up the day-to-day oversight of SAGE, McCune has been using her time, talent and treasure for years to influence public policy, on the world stage and in her own community. As a philanthropist, McCune donates $6 million per year through SAGE (two-thirds of which is not tax-deductible), and $1 million per year in her own name. She supports such diverse causes as theater restoration, libraries, fighting homelessness, the study of the mind and helping to eradicate poverty in rural Africa.

In 2008, she was honored alongside Hillary Clinton and the President of Liberia by Women’s Campaign International, at an event titled, “Shattering the Glass Ceiling: Honoring Inspirational Women around the Globe.”

Religion may have taught McCune ethics, but her family gave her the gift of gab. Growing up in New York, McCune heard a lot of pointed conversation over dinner about caring — not only for one’s neighbors but also for one’s country.

“You didn’t go to a family thing and just gossip, but you were soon ranting about politics,” she recalled.

At SAGE’s 40^th anniversary celebration in London in 2005, McCune announced that she was going to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Nations Millennium Project to help alleviate poverty in “at least one African village, sooner rather than later.” She challenged the U.S. government to keep its promise and donate 0.7 percent of its “bloated, resource-wasteful, and over-consuming American budget to the U.N. to end famine around the world in 25 years. …”

“Will it happen anytime soon? Well, frankly … I kind of doubt it,” McCune continued. “Terrorism, bombs — you know there’s always a good excuse. … But I care. And I want to be sure we keep our promise — somehow. So I will do my part. … I believe strongly that there are times when you have to do what you know is right.”

In 1990, McCune and her husband set up the McCune Foundation to fund micro-development projects in India and purchase books for university students in the U.S. Sara, who moved to Montecito, Calif., in 1993, later shifted the focus to grassroots organizations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, home respectively to SAGE’s headquarters and McCune’s own residence, giving a big boost to local progressive campaigns. Today, the foundation donates $650,000 annually to such causes as health care for Mixtec farmworkers, immigration reform, marriage equality for the gay community, bicycle commuting, and social and economic justice for low-income residents.

“Sara’s great strength is that she has earned the respect and carries the weight of someone who has been an incredibly successful businesswoman and philanthropist,” said Geoff Green, executive director of the Fund for Santa Barbara, an organization that McCune personally donates to. “She’s been able to say what needs to be said where no one else would do it.”

Saving theaters and lives

Without fanfare, McCune is now one of the top philanthropists in the Santa Barbara area, a community with more than its share of multimillionaires.

McCune loves the theater and owns one of the first folios of Shakespeare’s complete plays. To help make sure that Santa Barbara could boast a modern performing arts venue in its downtown, she donated $5 million through SAGE for the $60 million renovation of The Granada, an ornate theater with pitch-perfect acoustics, built in Spanish-Moorish style in 1924.

McCune led the finance committee for the project, too, practically a full-time fund-raising job. She gained a reputation for shutting down the small talk at committee meetings.

“She does not suffer fools gladly,” said Peter Frisch, The Granada executive director. “She expects people to produce, and she’s marvelous and charming at lunch.”

McCune and SAGE donated more than $4 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara; $2.5 million to the local hospital; $1.5 million for classical music in Santa Barbara, and $250,000 for an emergency homeless shelter in town for local families.

“The range of Sara’s involvement, commitment and dedication to Santa Barbara’s cultural, educational and social service organizations is unmatched,” said UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “Sara has brought prestige, vibrancy, professionalism, international stature and social justice to our local community.”

SAGE is known for providing generous health and educational benefits to its employees, a practice that began in the late 1980s when David McCune, one of Sara’s stepsons, became vice president. The company pays full college tuition for any of its U.S. employees who decide to go back to school for a bachelor’s degree; and it pays college textbook expenses for employees’ children, so long as they purchase the books new.

In 2003, Sara McCune was the national winner of the Ernst & Young Spirit of Entrepreneurship award for “extraordinary leadership” that “created a legacy that has had a positive social and economic impact on her employees, community and industry.”

Vivek Mehra, CEO and managing director of SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd., tells the story of the editorial assistant in New Delhi who was advised to donate a kidney to save her son but could not afford the operation. The woman had worked there for nearly 20 years.

“She risked losing her son,” Mehra said, “but SAGE has stepped in and will fund the entire operation. This single incident has changed the way employees view the company and forever changed the way SAGE will be viewed in the region. … SAGE is truly a unique entity by being this compassionate. It can only be this way because Sara is this way.”

60-hour work weeks

At 69, McCune has survived two bouts with cancer and likes to think she has mellowed with age. After all, she’s “cut back” to working 60 hours per week. But during much of 2009, she kept a schedule like a president’s, with two assistants and a chauffeur on hand, and she was on the road a lot. She took a two-month trip around the world and, except for four days off for her birthday, it was all business.

Most of McCune’s four step-children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren live on the East Coast. McCune lives alone with her Maltese dog, Duke (for Wellington). She reads four books and about 1,000 pages every week — lots of mysteries and a few SAGE books hot off the press, such as the SAGE Handbook of Sociology, second edition.

Although her doctors are telling her to “take it easy,” McCune is busy poring over 14 of her old journals for a book she is writing on the history of SAGE. She gets together with other local philanthropists to promote “strategic giving.” She wants to bring conferences to Santa Barbara on media and public policy.

McCune has something in common, after all, with the actress Helen Hayes, who said, “If you rest, you rust.”

“Sara has very high expectations of other people’s performance, but she is most requiring of herself,” said benShea, who stars this year in a PBS special that was underwritten by McCune.

“You know the Dylan Thomas poem, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’? Sara is someone who will not go gently into anything. She will grab life by the back of the neck and shake it.”