“There’s no ketchup in here,” joked an attendant, looking into the boxed lunch. “You’d think there would be.”

The lunches were provided for Wednesday’s lecture by Teresa Heinz Kerry, a woman who has been called one of the great philanthropists of our age.

As former wife of the late Sen. John Heinz, R-Penn., who died in a plane crash in 1991, Heinz Kerry is also an heiress to the Heinz Foods fortune, inheriting $500 million as well as control of the extensive Heinz philanthropy efforts after her husband’s death.

These efforts were topics of the speech she delivered to the crowd gathered inside the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.

Secondary to her philanthropic message was the circulation of campaign information for her current husband, presidential candidate John Kerry, D-Mass.

After an introduction by Hector Avalos, director of the Latino/a Studies Department, Heinz Kerry told the crowd she had been instructed not to talk about her husband’s campaign, but would gladly answer any questions about it.

“Her trip to Iowa was political, but we expressed a desire for her to speak on a more education-oriented topic,” said Avalos, associate professor of religious studies. “We didn’t want to seem as though we were endorsing a candidate.”

Her appearance at the MU was the result of an open invitation made by the Latino/a Studies Department to all the Democratic presidential candidates.

“Every election cycle, we ask all the presidential candidates to come and speak on Latino issues,” Avalos said. “She’s the only one who accepted.”

Heinz Kerry began by relating her experiences as a child living in Mozambique, then speaking about her father and about having been part of demonstrations against apartheid when she was older.

“I saw my father vote for the first time when he was 71,” she said. “The meaning of the word ‘freedom’ is very loaded with me.”

She also spoke about learning to respect the balance of nature, using it as her own moral compass later in life.

It was these experiences that had given birth to her current passions and beliefs, she said. Heinz Kerry said she is sometimes angered by the “apathy and ignorance” sometimes shown toward democracy in America.

“When you have something, you sometimes take it for granted,” she said.

Heinz Kerry also spoke at length about her involvement in the conversion of Pittsburgh — the headquarters of Heinz Family Philanthropies operations — which had gone from what she termed a “black city,” referring to the area’s industrial pollution problems, to a “green city,” a transformation in which her organization played a role.

After her husband’s death, she said she decided she wanted Pittsburgh to be a “green city.” Now, more than 10 years later, Pittsburgh is considered one of the greenest cities in the country, she said.

“It gives you a sense of the possible,” she said. “And with a sense of the possible, you can do anything.”

Heinz Kerry said she envisions collaboration between state and federal programs and philanthropic projects.

“Philanthropy looks at models,” Heinz Kerry said. “The difference is, [philanthropists] can tweak things as we go along if they’re not working. The Feds work on such a scale that they can’t really do that.”

Heinz Kerry said she didn’t know her plans if she became the first lady of the United States.

“I have no idea, except that I would like to continue my work, which I would legally be able to do,” she said. “Anybody who is dying to be first lady shouldn’t be allowed to do it. What I feel isn’t trepidation, just the unknown.

“If I was younger, and my kids were still at home, I wouldn’t have wanted to do this. But now they’re gone, and [my husband] has a lot to say.”