Interview: Trizia Hill Magagnini (2025-07-23)
Trizia Hill Magagnini speaks with Alexander Rojas in this google meet interview for Sega Retro.
by Alexander Rojas with Trizia Hill Magagnini
Sega Retro · July 23, 2025
This Sega Retro interview with Trizia Hill Magagnini was conducted by Alexander Rojas via google meet.
AR:
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I know you've got a million things going on, and I actually do too. I really appreciate you taking the time for me today.
THM:
My pleasure.
AR:
So just to get started here, so you managed the Sega Foundation for almost a decade, I believe. Is that right?
THM:
I think we were just shy of eight years.
AR:
Eight years. Sorry- you know what? I do have eight years written down. I don't know why I rounded that up to a decade. [laughs] But in terms of your previous experience, do you mind telling us about your corporate background before joining Sega?
THM:
Sure. Was it really corporate experience in the sense that I was an employee for a corporation? I started out in public accounting. I was a CPA working for what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers. Back in those days, it was- Coopers & Lybrand was the partnership name. I was with them for about five years in total when I was recruited to Sega by the executive management team to start the Sega Foundation.
AR:
Do you remember who at Sega recruited you?
THM:
Andre Oberholzer was a senior manager at the time. He had, to my recollection - apologies if it's not completely accurate - taken the CFO role at Sega within their corporate accounting group.
AR:
Would you recall how to… Can you say his last name one more time?
THM:
Oberholzer. I believe it's O-B-E-R-H-O-L-Z-E-R.
AR:
Perfect. Thank you, thank you. Did you have any previous experience in managing charitable organizations or doing charity work before Sega?
THM:
Not managing. I had worked as a volunteer and also a board member for a local nonprofit. I couldn't recall the exact name of it, but it was a Santa Clara County-based nonprofit that provided services in the region.
AR:
Do you know what kind of services those were or what the charity was based around?
THM:
You know what? I honestly don't remember exactly. I know that they were looking for people who had professional accounting backgrounds. I had been introduced to them through a colleague, I believe, who had also been doing some of the work for them. Then they asked me to come on and help them with their day-to-day, monthly type of accounting needs and board reporting.
AR:
Speaking of experience, what was it about Sega that attracted them to you or what were your qualifications that got you that position?
THM:
I think it was a combination of client responsibilities that I had while I was working for Coopers & Lybrand. For example, as an auditor, you often transition client projects from as short as two to three-week audits or reviews to half-years long. It just really depends on the size of the client and what it is you're working on. I do recall that I had some experience working in my auditor capacity for Stanford University on services that we were providing. I can't really go into details about that. So I did have that higher level of nonprofit exposure as well.
THM:
I also had a very wide experience base that included many other corporations and corporations that were software developers, consumer product companies, so like Sega being a consumer-facing product [corporation]. I think it was a combination of having all of those experiences with a variety of entities that really provided my solid foundation for… One, I think how to communicate with folks within those organizations, but having a very good understanding of how those organizations operate no matter how they were organized, whether they were incorporated or nonprofit or a partnership. We did have a lot of startup companies and organizations, venture capital organizations, so the actual entity type was a wide variety. I think I was seen as just having a really broad background and being able to easily move into what can most usually be an uncomfortable situation when you're, especially in this case, being challenged with donating funds. My role being the conduit between the corporation, the foundation, and then the community entity.
THM:
Then, of course, my formal accounting and business background from my education and my CPA certification, served to provide me the skills that I would need to capture all of that accounting and tax-related information in the systems and processes that we had to put in place, and that I was also tasked with doing. I was running both the… what I would call the back office administrative responsibilities, as well as what I would call the front office. Then I was also doing some of the other activities, which were more the public facing PR and marketing and grant making activities that we actually provided funding to.
AR:
Right. I wanted to actually ask about the… so you were brought in, I think it was April 1992, if you're LinkedIn… I got that off your LinkedIn, is that correct?
THM:
That sounds about right.
AR:
Could you tell us about getting the Sega Foundation started and off the ground?
THM:
Yeah, so in a broad stroke, I remember one of the executive management team telling me they had a certain amount of money already put into a legal structure that had been accomplished by the corporate attorney. Then they were looking for the person who would come in and put structure around the organization. As I previously described, both from an accounting tax compliance standpoint and a reporting standpoint, but also the internal operations for our board of directors reporting, and then the grant administration.
THM:
Then my role, which evolved into being the liaison between say, Sega's corporate marketing and PR departments and working around the constraints of the Foundation being a private foundation, and where we could find synergies between what corporate was doing versus the objectives that the Foundation was pursuing. Then that would manifest itself in ways like attending events that had been funded by the Foundation, and then taking advantage of photo opportunities and other publication of that particular event through PR means and what the corporate marketing teams might've been doing in another venue.
THM:
For example, Sega Sports might've been co-sponsoring a bowling tournament, you know, with major league baseball players, and then finding how we could integrate those things. We often did, towards the later years, we did a lot of fundraising of our own, whereas at the beginning of the Foundation's history, our funding was primarily coming from the corporation [Sega of America] directly into the foundation and then distributed as grants. Later, as those funds were not as high as previous years, we actually took on activities where we fundraised through events that then benefited a charity.
THM:
So we would do things like… the corporation had a music TV event that they were co-sponsoring in Austin, Texas, and we found a way for the Foundation to have a presence there. We literally set up a tent at the music festival and conducted fundraising and awareness building for the activities that the foundation had already funded and then was able to leverage some of the awareness and the PR that the corporation was generating through that type of an event. We did several others like that over the years.
AR:
I'll come back and ask around to that later, because that's actually very fascinating. I don't think we knew about that music event in Texas. Did you have like an overall philosophy in how to go about doing your work with the Foundation?
THM:
The Foundation's primary objectives were to support youth education and youth health programs. When we first started out, there was very little definition given to that very broad range of categories.
THM:
One of the youth health initiatives that we really pursued was pediatric AIDS in particular because of personal interest from Tom Kalinske at that time, part of the executive team, and some personal encounters with folks and kids. Kids who had, you know, been video game lovers and were suffering from the disease. Those natural synergies fed to a passion that the Foundation undertook to support, in this case, the pediatric AIDS foundation, which was started by Elizabeth Glaser and her two best friends, to support not only awareness that kids could, in fact, acquire AIDS, but then also later advocacy that they undertook with Congress to look for funds and seek funds so that they could eventually contribute to the research that was already going on, but not necessarily for kids. So the foundation provided substantial amount of funds over the years to their cause.
THM:
Then we also had a passion for children's health concerns, especially for underserved communities. We know that… well, we knew then, as we know now, there's no bias when it comes to children and their desire to have access to play. In this- in that digital age at the time, many of the kids that were playing Sega video games, they came from all walks of life. We ended up pursuing some funding to the Children's Health Fund. That was a mobile medical service that was reaching out literally with a physical vehicle that had been outfitted to provide comprehensive medical services to children in underserved communities. That was always that was so exciting to see when they were literally helping kids who had no other form, or not as comprehensive of a form, of access to the basic health care that a lot of us take for granted for pediatric care in particular.
THM:
Then we also, we reached out… Because we're a national company… you know, we sold all over the world. Because we're based in the U.S., we were looking at national programs and asking the question, "How can we be of service?" We really approached these organizations with the attitude of "Help us learn, help us learn where your pain points are and how can we be of service?", but also "How can we be of support from a financial standpoint?" So we had reached out to the American Academy of Pediatrics and asked those questions. That was me doing that, right? We as a collective group undertook it. That's really what I brought to the table was the thinking of "Where do we make the most impact the quickest?", because that was also a priority our executive board had was, "Let's get up and operational as quick as possible and do it as effectively and meaningful as we could."
THM:
The American Academy of Pediatrics pulled together a group of emergency medicine doctors who were specifically pediatric emergency medical doctors throughout the country. I remember one doctor in particular, Jim Seidel, who was the head of the pediatric emergency medical services for Harbor UCLA Medical Center. We just got fascinated by what they were struggling with at the time. What we found out from these conversations and pursuing what the needs were: many doctors, if not all at that time, had a paper card that they kept in their jacket pocket. It was a reference tool to act as a therapeutic dosing calculator.
THM:
They were also frustrated and struggling with EMT services that were encountering children literally on the ground in whatever dire circumstances it was. They didn't have the properly sized equipment to treat children on board an ambulance, they did not have a lot of the technology that exists now where communication could happen between the vehicle and the hospital or the medical site. Then we went further and asked, well, "How do we solve this problem? Is it a bigger problem than just this local problem?" So we eventually worked with the American Academy of Pediatrics to develop what was called KidSTAT Plus, I believe it was called. K-I-D and S-T-A-T. They wanted to digitize.
THM:
The technology back then was literally CDs. We didn't have software developers building these great dashboards that a lot of medical professionals now have access to. They literally wanted to digitize those therapeutic calculators into a CD and the CD could be disseminated to the hospitals and the children's hospitals to help those people literally sitting at that hospital workstation waiting for the ambulance to get there, to start looking and figuring out what they needed to know essentially before the patient even arrived. That was the ideal situation.
THM:
They also used- there's something called the Red Book of Infectious Diseases. They wanted to pursue digitizing this huge, huge reference manual. I don't believe we got to the point where they had the capacity and the funding to do the digitization of that Red Book. I do know that we did accomplish getting the KidSTAT CD done.
AR:
That was a big accomplishment.
THM:
Yeah, it was well received. It feels really strange now here in 2025, looking at all the years that have passed to think that a CD was so great and grand, but I guess at the time it was an anomaly of sorts. We were very proud of the work. We were very proud of the conversations we were having as well, because I think what happened to for these organizations is it opened their thinking up to the idea that others in the corporate world and other benefactors could help fund their projects that they had.
AR:
Yeah. Do more than help fund, help participate and develop. That KidSTAT [project] is actually incredible.
THM:
Leverage the network, yeah. That was part of what I brought to the table as well. I, from just a character standpoint, personality standpoint, I love making networking work. Especially when it was so meaningful. Right. We're really having an impact on kids' lives with the organizations who are delivering the services. Being able to bring the groups of people together was always very exciting. Those were kind of the big ones on the health side. On the education side, one of the biggest questions we wanted to try and pursue was the integration of technology into education.
THM:
"Where did the public school system in particular stand at that point in time when it came to kids having access to Internet, and access to teachers in the classrooms who were delivering a curriculum that utilized technological tools?" That was a whole conversation that was needing to take place at that time. I'm going to use a big word that I learned from the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, which is pedagogy. They were grappling with, "How does technology fit into the pedagogy of education?", let alone the curriculum.
THM:
This is another example where… we invited ourselves essentially to the table to have this open dialogue like, "What are you struggling with? What do you need? How and what role can we play?" So we found places within their organization where they were training teachers. They would bring teachers together over the summer months… I remember attending one in Seattle in particular. I don't know what year it was. The entire conference was teachers and administrators and other stakeholders coming together to discuss that very subject and how it gets developed, not just for a single subject, but across all subjects, whether it's science or math or… "Where can we make a dent first?" That was that was very exciting. Then we decided to also fund some efforts by other organizations to be examples of how good technology could be utilized and bring the resources to bear. One I'm thinking of in particular is PUENTE Learning Center. It's P-U-E-N-T-E.
AR:
Right!
THM:
Which is based in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. They were struggling with how to help the parents who were receiving educational services at PUENTE help their own children. They conceived the idea of creating a media center. They literally wanted to get computers, let alone computers that were networked. I remember they had an auxiliary site and then they had the main site and they couldn't network the two. Software back then wasn't as sophisticated nearly as much as now. [laughs] I remember the day we kicked off the Sega Media Center in this one particular room. It seems comical to me now because we've advanced so far, but… I forget how many workstations were funded. We did this as a partnership with some other organizations. The room was called the Sega Media Center. There might have been 30 workstations in the room.
THM:
For the PR part of it, there were very reputable, notable guests who were invited, so photo opportunities, etc. I wanted to put a screen saver on each of the screens that had a graphic of some sort that said Sega Media Center. We had no way to do that back then. There was no such thing.
AR:
[laughs]
THM:
So I remember creating a graphic. I can't even tell you what file type, but we loaded it onto every single machine. The IT person at PUENTE literally helped me do this like 30 minutes before the PR event because we realized, "Oh, this is not a very good photo op." So we were fixing our own technology challenges within these programs that we were funding. It seems minimal now, but we were literally solving our own problems while we were helping them solve theirs.
THM:
That was a wonderful organization doing great work and just, you know, a small example. We funded other technology service-type of projects and programs. Sega was located in San Mateo County in those early years before moving to San Francisco, and I remember we did some outreach and funding with the San Mateo Department of Education and their technology group. They were probably, in terms of the Bay Area, one of the county Departments of Ed. that was really, really pursuing "How do we get technology into the classrooms and how do we get the teachers capable of working with it and delivering what they need to to meet their education standards?" So this is an example of where we leveraged what the foundation was doing.
THM:
I found out that one of the schools where they were going to set up the demonstration effort for the school district literally had to have cable pulled and they needed manpower to literally have folks who know how to, one, pull cable into a building and punch it down to the routers and the servers and switches and all of that technological backbone… We recruited our Sega employees so we got very proactive in creating a "wire-pulling day." People just wanted to help. The district showed up with the school and the physical parts of the routers and the servers and the cable itself and told us what we needed to do and everybody went to work. That's where the energies were great.
THM:
We did a lot of others where public community food service organizations were seeking donations. We would, maybe once twice a year, promote food donations and we'd have competitions between the various corporate departments. I remember. When Bernie Stolar was there - he was the president after Tom Kalinske. Bernie was a very competitive human. He wanted to win the food donation effort. I literally was going out buying 50 pound bags of rice and filling up the containers and [laughs]. It's just an example of the passion that the humans who worked for Sega always had. The employee involvement was tremendous. The people who worked at Sega were fabulous humans, and it's a tribute to the culture [at Sega] that we all enjoyed very much. We even stay connected on Facebook, for example. There's, I'm sure, many, many examples from the various departments where the people who knew each other personally still wish each other happy birthday and stuff. It's just great.
AR:
That's wonderful. I was actually going to ask about that. On that mention… Me and Kalinske, we were speaking earlier about when he began supporting pediatric AIDS and that whole big push… He mentioned that most people in the company were perfectly fine with it and very supportive. He did get a little bit of pushback just because, you know, it was it was pediatric AIDS, and it was very taboo at the time. Do you recall what kinds of pushback you encountered from either within Sega or outside of Sega during that time?
THM:
That was not my experience. I don't have any recollection of a person challenging me directly on the Foundation's involvement or commitment to that whole subject [pediatric AIDS].
AR:
Oh that's good!
THM:
I do think, though, that because we also funded like the Children's Health Fund program that I mentioned to you earlier… It might have happened in certain circles early on in the stages of the Foundation getting up and going. I think after the first year, second year, as we had enough time go by that, we were already then invested in multiple programs that, if there was any undercurrent or opinion of this or that taboo kind of subject matter, it may have been softened by the fact that we were doing very substantial stuff for children's health in general. Then the American Academy of Pediatrics was another example. Then in later years, I designed a funding effort for the nine county hospitals in the Bay Area with a partner who was working with the San Francisco 49ers at the time, and in particular, Jerry Rice.
THM:
We created a matching program where every touchdown that Jerry made in that season - because he was chasing the touchdown record that season - we would make X number of dollar donation to those county hospitals and for their pediatric services in particular. Yeah, I fortunately never really got any pushback on the pediatric AIDS initiatives. I could see how that may have happened within certain circles, but I was not privy to it.
AR:
Do you remember the name of that Jerry Rice touchdown program that you made?
THM:
Oh, hmm.
AR:
I know this is like 30-year-old memories here. No worries if you don't remember on the spot.
THM:
It's escaping me. I do remember we crafted it. The Sega Foundation crafted it. I had the benefit of a staff member at that time, and she was a very important part of the networking that we did with the person who had the access to Jerry and his team. Just rely on that. We created it. We wanted to make an effort to provide funding to the Bay Area county hospitals that were really the organization's boots on the ground for the underserved populations and underserved kids in particular. We created a very visible way of having the public participate in that. I remember… I think it was Tom [Kalinske] who was on the field doing photographs with Jerry.
THM:
It happened to be a night… I don't know why this comes to mind, but I believe the 49ers were playing the Raiders, and that was the night that Jerry broke the touchdown record. There was an on field presentation of a check or some sort. Tom was there, I want to say Tom was the one who attended that event.
AR:
Oh, wow. That really worked out for you then.
THM:
It was great. Then Jerry had committed to hand-sign photographs of him catching that ball. We shared that with all of the partners who were involved in the program. It was just a nice way to be able to integrate what the Sega Corporation was already doing and the work that was so meaningful to the Sega Foundation.
AR:
You've actually you've had your hands in quite a lot. I appreciate you telling me all this.
THM:
I was a busy person. I traveled a lot. I was on an airplane… Back in the day when the TSA did not exist, I literally could get on a plane in the morning and be in L.A. all day and be back to pick up my child at daycare at six o'clock.
AR:
Wow. That's a pretty busy schedule.
THM:
Yeah, it was great, though. Loved it. The work we were doing, we were all passionate about it and it never felt like work.
AR:
Again, it's really heartwarming to hear how much enthusiasm the rest of Sega of America had behind all these initiatives.
THM:
Yeah. Then… I don't know if you've spoken with others who were on the board, the Sega [Foundation] board, or if you even know. The board for the Foundation was our original founder, David Rosen. Tom Kalinske, at the time that the Foundation got started, he was a board member. Then Paul Rioux, R-I-O-U-X, he was an executive VP, and then Shinobu Toyoda was also an executive VP.
AR:
Oh awesome.
THM:
So all four of those gentlemen were our board members. Each and every one of them were very passionate about what we were doing. I remember David Rosen in particular just being so approachable and down to earth and committed to community. I remember, when we were considering the funding for the Children's Health Fund, how important it was to him that that particular organization had gotten its roots started in New York. CHF was originally, I believe, started by Irwin Redlener, who was the physician who had the idea. David came from, I want to say, the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in New York. He was just really, really honored to be associated with funds coming from Sega to an organization that were serving those kids in such need in some of those New York boroughs and neighborhoods.
AR:
You know, speaking of… we've covered quite a lot of the Foundation's projects here. PUENTE Learning Center, the Red Book Project that didn't make it, KidSTAT, that mobile- Oh, really quickly, do you remember the name of that mobile medical service that you were behind?
THM:
The mobile- like the literal vehicle that went to provide the comprehensive medical service? That is Children's Health Fund, the one that I was just referring to. Yeah. CHF is the acronym. That's the one that was- it still exists. It was started by Irwin Redlener, R-E-D-L-E-N-E-R, and I believe his wife. That was highly supported by Garfunkel and, gosh, my old brain is failing me, Simon and Garfunkel. Forgot who Simon's… last name…
AR:
Simon and Garfunkel, they're pretty big.
THM:
Paul! Paul Simon! My brain just came back.
AR:
[laughs]
THM:
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were huge supporters, and they would put on benefit concerts to raise money. We helped launch a CHF unit down in Southern California, in Los Angeles. I believe it was associated with the Drew Medical Foundation at the time, which was, I want to say in Compton or nearby there. Simon and Garfunkel had a reunion concert specifically to benefit CHF. That was also an example of where Sega's corporate folks could get involved in promoting and publicizing, either from a press release standpoint or a press tour for the event, and where the Sega Foundation would benefit from the recognition in those kinds of public activities. Our ultimate goal was to generate awareness for the organization, so we were able to do that.
AR:
Speaking of Sega of America and the Foundation, you had mentioned that the Sega Foundation was operated largely independently from Sega of America, or it legally was. I'm curious how much autonomy from Sega you actually had.
THM:
Oh, immense autonomy, immense autonomy. The Sega Foundation was organized as a private foundation. There's very strict legal and tax regulations to prevent what's called self-dealing. We were very aware of where that line stood. Our board members were very cognizant of it. We always undertook the business of the Foundation, primarily from the point of view of the Foundation. Like, "What is this organization's objectives and how are we meeting them?" But we did not get direction per se from Sega of America, the corporation. It actually came, I want to say, probably 100% from the other direction simply because of those obligations to stay compliant with the private foundation rules.
THM:
Money would be donated from Sega of America, Inc., to the Foundation, and it would be reported on a public tax report, as any private foundation would, as its income. Then my employment… I was employed by the corporation, and the corporation paid for my salary, which then was also reported as a contribution to the Foundation from the corporation.
AR:
I didn't know about that distinction.
THM:
Yeah. A lot of corporate foundations do it in a variety of ways. Back in the day… it's really when corporate foundations were becoming a thing, so to speak. We were all just trying to figure it out, so much so that many of us ended up getting together and creating a network here in the Bay Area in particular. The likes of Target Foundation and other big foundations that evolved could learn how to operate.
AR:
Do you remember the name of that network?
THM:
I do not. I do not. I wish I could! [laughs]
AR:
No worries. I'm pushing you for a 30-year-old memory, you're all good. Let's see… So I wanted to just quickly touch on everything that… You had KidSTAT and the PUENTE Learning Center, and just quite a lot going on. Just so I'm able to cover all the bases here: are there any further big, notable Foundation projects that you haven't already mentioned? Off the top of your head.
THM:
Yes. Towards the end of my tenure there, we did not have the luxury of lots of money coming in from the corporation.
AR:
Right, having to be creative.
THM:
We were heavily relying on our own fundraising efforts. A colleague of mine who was my former counterpart, I would call her, at the Mattel Foundation, she had gone to work doing some fundraising for the Child Welfare League of America. We were approached with the idea of creating a video game industry event that consisted of us bringing together about 900 corporate executives and folks from the video game industry to the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco one night for a sit-down dinner and live auction.
THM:
I don't remember exactly how much money we raised, but we raised a substantial amount of money at that event. It was a wonderful way to bring awareness to our program, and the Child Welfare League of America in particular that night, amongst all of these video game entities.
AR:
900 is quite a lot.
THM:
Yeah, it was a very huge thing. I don't know if you are aware, but the Entertainment Rating Software Board, I think it's ERSB [ESRB], they too were undertaking charitable activities. They would be in attendance. I think somebody came and attended that event as well. It was always very encouraging and uplifting that it seemed like when it came to all coming together, like the business of being competitive otherwise in a competitive world, that all just kind of went away. It was so refreshing. Yeah, Child Welfare League was a huge undertaking.
THM:
Here's the thing: I used to love leveraging resources from the corporation, because one of the things I would ask is, "Who do I have access to in terms of talent that could do something fantastic?" We had been approached… So I think it's April is the National Child Abuse Prevention Month. I'm gonna forget the exact name of the organization, but it gave us the idea to approach one of our partners, who was… I don't know who the actual individual is, but we designed a playing card [Cool Kids Know], literally, like a Major League Baseball player playing card. We had Sonic on the front. It was designed specifically with a back that had an outreach message to kids who may be suffering child abuse in some form or fashion.
THM:
I forget how many thousands of boxes we were able to put it in, but there was a new Sonic game being launched. We worked with the groups internally to get that card inserted into, I wanna say like 100,000 boxes of that Sonic release. We weren't able to ever track incoming calls per se, but I'd like to believe in my heart of hearts that even if one child picked up the phone and called to get help, that it was a good thing. That was like one of the other bigger efforts, but didn't really have like numbers associated with it, in terms of a dollar value that was donated to an organization.
AR:
Do you remember the name of that industry event with the 900 [representatives] attending? The St. Francis one?
THM:
No, I'd have to pull out some old marketing assets to see. I don't recall. I think it was something like A Night to Unite for the Child Welfare League of America, something along those lines.
AR:
Okay, yeah. That gives me a start. Just in all fairness, after this interview is done, I might email you to see, "Hey, if you do remember, shoot me a message and let me know." I'd love to get it written down.
THM:
Okay!
AR:
So out of all the charitable contributions you approved or oversaw, which one are you the most proud of? Of course you could be proud of everything because everything did goodwill and good work, but which one do you feel like accomplished the most per se?
THM:
Hm.
AR:
Or had the greatest lasting legacy or impact? I know that's a little hard to distinguish one from another when it's all good work.
THM:
There's probably three. I think PUENTE Learning Center is right up at the top of the list because those were physical pieces of technology that real humans, children in particular, were going to have access to. We can only believe that they benefited from that. If only from their education.
THM:
The other would be the Children's Health Fund. I think the idea of bringing medical services to underserved communities in a real physical fashion by a team of compassionate and wonderful humans, that had real impact for real people. I think the American Academy of Pediatrics would be another one that I was really, really proud of because I was not very old at the time. [laughs] I feel so old now compared.
AR:
[laughs] You're still not old!
THM:
The idea that I could sit in a boardroom at the American Academy of Pediatrics in Chicago and converse with doctors, literally a round table of the brightest and best trained emergency medical physicians for pediatrics in our country at the time, who were passionate about their life's work and just wanting to make their patients better and help physicians with something as simple as a tool like KidSTAT. I have goosebumps just describing that to you.
THM:
I think for me that's where what we were doing was really, really impactful. It wasn't just the kids we were serving, but it was the humans whose lives, the adult humans' lives, who we were changing who were serving those populations of children. Whether they were in the health side of things or the education side of things.
AR:
Now just to ask a few more questions here as long as I have time: You left the Sega Foundation in January 2000, which is I assume the date that the Foundation closed down or was wound down. Is that true?
THM:
Well, it was wound down. There were minimal dollars left in its coffers at the time I left. Basically, the ownership for reporting and its management, even though it had very limited operations after that, was handed over to the corporate accounting group. I never really knew what transpired. I do believe that funds were granted through the Sega Foundation entity [following my departure], but it was nowhere near the level or type of programming that we were doing prior to that.
AR:
So it did continue a little bit on after you left?
THM:
It did. Yeah. It just did not have the resources, though, to grant big programmatic stuff like we had been doing.
AR:
So final question here: Do you feel like the Foundation accomplished what it had originally set out to accomplish, what it was created to do?
THM:
I do believe that it did, with the resources it had access to, to do its work. I think, had we had the luxury of more actual dollars and resources to hire actual people to manage and create programs, we could have had a much, much bigger impact. I do believe with what we did in that short amount of time was very, very impactful. I think that the people who I was networking with through those organizations that we funded directly and then the ones that I networked with outside of the actual grant making process, other corporate foundation officers, I think we all learned so much. I really do believe that we were the beginning, amongst some others, of what very good corporate stewardship looks like when it comes to grant making.
THM:
I know that that was my level of standard that I was bringing to the organization at that time. I think the way we conducted ourselves, including our board members, of course, actually acted like a kind of an example for others who wanted to do similar work. I do think that it was very effective.
AR:
Right. You really paved the way for not just Sega doing this, but all these companies. It seems like the Foundation set such a positive example at such an early point. Just personally, thank you for all you've put in. I know that you've touched so many people's lives. Thank you so much.
THM:
Well, thank you. Yeah. It's awesome to be able to share. I think I've always just kind of taken it for granted. It's just what we did. Made me happy, made the people who we were working with and for happy. It's so nice to be able to share it now.
AR:
Right. Thank you once again for speaking with me. This was wonderfully insightful. I have a mountain of information now. I just I really appreciate you taking the time to share it with me.
THM:
My pleasure, Alex. It was great to chat with you. Stay in touch.
AR:
Absolutely, I definitely will.
Transcript sourced from https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Trizia_Hill_Magagnini_(2025-07-23)_by_Alexander_Rojas and migrated into devquoted with linked people, tags, source metadata, and media where available.