Prior to joining the team at the Fisher Foundation, I spent more than two decades serving the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in the Office of Development. Children who come through those hospital doors know they will receive the highest quality of health care, regardless of their ability to pay, as it should be. Yet many of those very same children are living in poverty; they may not have access to high quality early care and education, safe and adequate housing, nutritional needs, and may be experiencing a higher level of toxic stress than peers from higher socioeconomic households. Our most precious resource, our babies, deserve a better start, one that fully supports healthy human development – regardless of their ability to pay.
The Foundation’s early childhood impact area works to level the playing field by increasing opportunities for families with young children by creating access to basic needs and to high quality early care and education.
What do you admire most about your grant partners?
Our grant partners are visionaries who inspire me through their tenacious commitment to their causes. My interactions with our grant partners are a gift! With selfless dedication and with hopeful hearts they roll up their sleeves and get to work to solve today’s challenges by digging in and finding ways to care for others, even when the path to success may be uncertain.
What advice would you give someone interested in philanthropy?
If you want to advance positive change in the world while aligning your career with your values, there is no better career choice than philanthropy. Through the relationships I form while grantmaking, I hold a unique position in being able to witness all the good that our partners do every day for the benefit of others. In the words of Booker T. Washington, “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
