Danielle Moore ’85 likes to address things directly, and sometimes that means getting the obvious questions out of the way first.
Yes, being mayor of Palm Beach, Florida, where the president of the United States keeps a home, can make for interesting conversations. And no, politics aren’t especially important to her: What matters is preserving and enhancing the quality of life of the citizens of Palm Beach.
That pragmatic philosophy extends to her philanthropy and volunteerism at Duke. When considering how to be involved at the university, Moore asks what will make for a better student experience, especially things that encourage dialogue between people who are different from one another. Then she dedicates her time and treasure to support those programs.
Moore, whose nickname is Dani (pronounced “Donny”), has shown that dedication time and again. She served on the boards of advisors for DukeEngage, the university’s signature civic engagement program, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, which guides students in understanding and negotiating the moral challenges of our time.
“It’s important because both of those programs allow opportunities for students or people in general to see the other side,” Moore said. “They both foster calm dialogue, regardless of which side you’re coming from.”
As the president of a charitable organization run by her family, the Mary Alice Fortin Foundation, Moore also has significant resources to fund the causes she cares about. A $5 million gift from the Fortin Foundation in 2013 created resources for DukeEngage, enabling a student training program, the enhancement of summer activities, and a fall reunion. Another $5 million in 2019 benefited Bass Connections, Duke’s initiative that enables undergraduate and graduate students to work alongside faculty on research teams addressing urgent societal issues. That gift named the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, where teams share their research with the community and students present their team’s accomplishments.
This year, Moore and the foundation pledged $5 million to the Kenan Institute for Ethics, a flexible gift to be used at the director’s discretion, with an emphasis on undergraduate education. In a tribute to the generosity of Dani and the foundation, the main offices of the Kenan Institute for Ethics will be named the Fortin Family Foundation Director’s Suite.
The director, David Toole, noted that the institute is named after Frank Kenan, whose charge in 1995 was for the institute to illuminate for students and the public, the fundamental link between responsible citizenship and virtues like integrity, honor, courage, and compassion. An emphasis on ethics as character formation is a primary focus of the institute’s work with undergraduates, Toole explained, with the goal of setting up each student to live a good life amid complexities, challenges, failures and successes. The institute’s newest initiative to fulfill this charge, launched in fall 2025, is Capacious Minds.
“It’s an attempt to create ways in which undergraduates can learn to talk to one another across ideological divides,” Toole said, explaining that the name comes from the John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty.” Mill believed that debates on the great open questions of life often devolve into a “struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners” because few people have “minds sufficiently capacious” to hold on to opposing views long enough to reconcile them. “Building and scaling programs like Capacious Minds,” Toole said, “is the kind of thing we envision Dani’s funding helping us accomplish.”
The Fortin Foundation is the legacy of Moore’s grandmother, Mary Alice Fortin, and step-grandfather, Phil Fortin, a Billings, Montana, oil man. Phil Fortin felt a strong commitment to his communities—Billings, where he grew up and made his fortune, and Palm Beach, where he lived much of his later years. The foundation was formalized in 1952 and continues to benefit organizations in Montana, along with the philanthropic interests of the current directors nationwide.
“We’ve continued a legacy of giving in Billings,” Moore said. “We still think it’s an important part of our commitment to Phil Fortin and his vision, and we fund all the same things that he funded way back then. We’ve always had a large commitment to education and to children and bettering our community.”
Moore’s giving interests spring from her experience at Duke as much as her family history. As an undergraduate, she worked in the dining halls—the Down Under on East Campus and then the Oak Room on West Campus. “I had the opportunity to meet real people, real hardworking Durham people who all had great hearts, who loved to be at Duke,” Moore said. “They worked the day shift, and they were amazing. I became friends with them.”
That experience has helped her career as a public administrator, where she pushes to make sure that necessary conversations occur, even if they are uncomfortable. And it persists in her work at Duke through the Fortin Foundation.
“The foundation has a commitment to fostering dialogue,” Moore says. “You may not like the dialogue, but it still has to happen.”
For the future, Moore is focused on working with her family foundation to continue to affect positive change at Duke and beyond.
“I’m blessed to head a board of really good human beings who can think outside of the box and outside of the privilege that we’ve been afforded to really make a difference in other communities,” she said. “Here we are, 70 some odd years later, the Fortin Foundations are going strong. I think Phil Fortin would be really happy that we continued to serve our community and to meet the needs of some of the less fortunate who could use a hand up, not a handout.”