Tag Archive for: philanthropy

Using Our Experience, Skills, and Power
 to Advocate for Social Issues That Matter

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Tania HaighIn honor of Women’s History Month, it is important to take the time to understand just how much women have contributed to modern society. Of course, it’s easy for most people to identify those “superhero” women who juggle childcare, home duties, education, and work. In reality, though, many of these women also contribute to making the world a better place by pursuing their dreams, careers, and personal aspirations.

To achieve their goals, women have also fought to shatter the glass ceiling by finding corporate success as leaders of Fortune 500 companies. For example, Susan Wojcicki took the helm of YouTube in 2014; but long before her rise as the video-sharing platform’s CEO, she was already an entrepreneur paving her way as one of today’s highest-performing female CEOs. Similarly, in 2012, Ginni Rometty was announced as president and CEO of IBM, becoming the company’s first female chief in its 108-year history.

For certain women leaders, however, achieving professional success and recognition is simply not enough. That’s why many of them find ways to use their corporate influence to impact change—and some even transition away from the corporate world altogether and, instead, use the skills they’ve gained to start social impact programs that truly make a difference in the lives of others.

Take Melissa Lightfoot Levick, for example. Lightfoot Levick is the executive director of ONEHOPE Foundation. Through the contacts and experience she gained in her prior leadership roles in tech businesses, she now uses her knowledge and skills to connect nonprofit organizations with commercial companies, which then enables customers to support brands with charitable affiliations.

It’s no surprise, either, that we see women leaders dedicated to improving children’s lives—such as by better protecting their online experiences, for example. The KIDS TOO Movement was recently launched to further this goal. KIDS TOO works collaboratively with other nonprofits to drive legislation that protects children from online predators, child sexual abuse material, and sex trafficking. The organization also provides parents with helpful information about how to spot warning signs and how to educate their children about the appropriate use of digital devices and platforms.

For all women in the workplace, no matter what their community passions are, there are all sorts of ways for them to use their experience and skills to advocate for all the social issues that matter most to them. For example, women can:

  • Spread Awareness. Women play a key role in bringing attention to important issues and elevating these issues to national awareness. They can speak at national events and conferences to address social issues that are important to them. They can use their influence in the workplace to create social impact programs. They can serve on boards of nonprofit organizations to assist with their executive leadership needs.
  • Step Up and Volunteer. Many nonprofits rely on volunteer assistance, and women with relevant knowledge and expertise often step up to the plate. Organizations that advocate for social change, in particular, often rely on these women to roll up their sleeves and get the work done. While any woman can contribute in meaningful ways, those with specialized skills, such as attorneys and tech specialists, can add significant value to any social program that needs their expertise, driving even more impact.
  • Help Drive Funding. Many women now serve in the C-suite for leading brands. Since most corporations set aside funding to contribute to community causes, women in executive leadership can often use their influence to allocate funding to causes that matter the most to them. Social-impact organizations typically need funding in order to advance their mission; thus, when women drive funding to nonprofit groups, they themselves are playing a vital role in ensuring the success of these organizations.

Throughout the ages, in spite of regular and ongoing obstacles and challenges, women have always played a pivotal role in tackling social issues. As such, their leadership, experience, skills, and power should continue to be leveraged in positive ways to address the many pressing needs identified throughout the world today. Now, during Women’s History Month, it is especially vital to remember and honor women’s collective power and to acknowledge how successful women have been—and will continue to be—at shaping our communities in healthy and positive ways.

By Tania Haigh, founder of the KIDS TOO Movement and co-founder of Parents Against Child Sex Abuse (P.A.X.A.)

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“Knock Again When a Door is Shut” – and Other Lessons We Learned From 10,000 Women Graduates

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10000 WomenIn the May edition of the Glass Hammer, participants in Goldman Sachs’ second annual 10,000 Women Growth Fellowship reflect on their entrepreneurial journeys, and Asahi Pompey, global head of Corporate Engagement, shares why supporting women entrepreneurs is of the utmost importance to the firm.

In addition, Goldman Sachs women vice presidents and associates selected to be 10,000 Women champions – serving as mentors to the Growth Fellows – discuss why they wanted to become involved in the program. 

Learn more about Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, a global initiative that fosters economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business and management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital.

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10,000 Women Growth Fellows – entrepreneurs who previously participated in the 10,000 Women program and who were selected to participate in a series of training, networking and coaching sessions with senior leaders across Goldman Sachs – shared their experiences building businesses from the ground up and challenges they’ve overcome:

Amanda Obidike, founder of STEMi Makers Africa from Nigeria: “I come from a community where women are afraid to dream, they are afraid to excel. From this background, it has been a challenge – sometimes you don’t get the same types of partnerships, or opportunities because people ask, ‘how are you, as a woman, managing this organization?’ Amidst these hurdles, I’ve learned resilience, I’ve always learned to knock again when a door is shut.”

Raquel Molina, founder of Futuriste Tecnologia from Brazil: “I have always done things that were considered ‘for boys.’ When I began in the drone field and started Futuriste Tecnologia, people were surprised to receive information about drones from a woman. In situations where we are questioned about our expertise, we need to keep calm, share our knowledge and show that we are experts. Slowly but surely, people are beginning to understand the importance of women in the workplace.”

“When we provide tools to women entrepreneurs, we’re not only helping to elevate their business, we’re also elevating their communities,” said Asahi Pompey, global head of Corporate Engagement. “Goldman Sachs is proud to have supported more than 10,000 women throughout the world – and countless communities – since the program’s inception in 2008.”

Goldman Sachs women serving as 10,000 Women champions, a role in which they serve as mentors supporting the entrepreneurs throughout their fellowship, shared why they were driven to participate in the program:

  • Wendy Emali, Risk Division, Dallas: “I grew up in Kenya, where many of these 10,000 Women graduates are from. I empathize with their stories, many of them who have very difficult pasts but very bright futures. When a woman thrives, her community thrives, her family thrives, the economy thrives. All it takes is to give them support.”
  • Rebecca Simon, Investment Banking Division, New York: “When you’re in the very early days of building a business, you have to wear a lot of different hats. The best part of that is how much you learn. You learn all of the factual things that may be required of your business or your industry, but you also learn invaluable skills, such as rallying people around your vision and staying grounded when things feel bigger than you can manage. These are all things our Growth Fellows excel at and are things we can learn from them.”
  • Georgia Weeks, Global Markets Division, Sydney: “I thoroughly enjoy building relationships with other commercially-minded women and sharing my experience and insights. Not only is it important to me for women to be financially independent, but to really pursue something that you love. Not so long ago, I became a single mother when my son was only a couple months old. I cannot tell you how lucky I was, to be in a position where I could not only stand on my own two feet, I could support the two of us, but I could get out of bed and do something that I love.”
  • Lara Tijani, Internal Audit Division, London: “Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, entrepreneurship is a way of life. But like many other countries in the world, women are underrepresented and disproportionately impacted, with limited access to funding and gender bias. Programs such as 10,000 Women can help change this.”

Learn more about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program.

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Intrepid Woman: Liz Elting, Founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation

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Liz Eltingby Cathie Ericson

“Those who can help, should help.”

That’s the impetus behind Liz Elting’s mission, as founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, which lifts up women and marginalized populations in education, health and other ways.

Using Her Success to Help Others

Elting’s philanthropic ability comes from previous work success. She always loved languages—learning four of them while living, studying and working in five countries. After graduating from college with a degree in world languages, she worked at a translation company in production and sales which prompted her to realize the practice could likely be done better. After three years she decided to go back to school and earned her MBA from NYU; shortly after graduating, she held a finance position in a French bank and quickly realized it wasn’t for her. “As the only woman professional there, whenever the phone rang, they would call for me,” she says.

That led her to strike out on her own, where she started her own translation company. Over the next 26 years she grew TransPerfect into the world’s largest language solutions company, with over $600 million in revenue, more than 5,000 employees and 11,000 clients and offices in more than 90 cities worldwide.

In 2018 she sold her half of the company in order to focus full time on philanthropy, launching the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, which revolves around pure philanthropy, but also supporting entrepreneurs.

A Wide-Ranging Mission

The foundation has recently launched the Halo Project to meet the needs of those affected by COVID-19. “It’s a public health and economic catastrophe unlike anything we’ve seen; not only did it spread like wildfire faster than we could understand, but it painfully underscored structural inequalities,” she says. The foundation aims to identify areas where they can have the best impact, and it was an easy pivot to focus on women since they are often on the front lines.

Other important areas the foundation services include public health, such as the International Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation, designed to help research and treat a rare kind of lymphoma, which Elting’s father has. He had been told he had five years to live and now the common diagnosis has expanded to 18 years, signifying satisfying and rewarding progress.

She also does work with the American Heart Association, helping to raise awareness of women’s heart issues, an important need given that most heart research is directed toward men. Thanks to her work with Go Red for Women and her participation with the board, she’s become connected with other groups to help spread the word about heart disease prevention. For example, the foundation has installed a blood pressure kiosk at the Campaign Against Hunger’s sites to help those populations get their blood pressure checked. She also has supplied Susan’s Place, a women’s shelter in Harlem, with equipment like blood pressure cuffs.

Other work includes donating to the National Organization for Women and helping support “Leftover Cuisine,” which takes extra restaurant meals directly to food banks. She was able to connect a friend who works with auto dealers to help supply the cars and drivers as a win-win to keep the dealerships’ teams employed while delivering much-needed food to the food banks.

In addition, Elting is active with her alma maters, including Trinity College where she attended undergraduate school and the NYU Business School. Her foundation gives four annual MBA scholarships for high-performing women, along with investing in two entrepreneurs a year.

As she considers areas where she can make a difference, Elting prioritizes research to make sure the money is going to the right causes and confirm exactly where the funds are going. So, for example, when she makes a cash donation to the food bank, she wants to make sure that every dollar goes to food. With the AHA, she made sure the donation directly funds the blood pressure station drive rather than being directed to a more general fund, and at NYU, she directly gives to the scholarships.

“It’s important to clarify where your money is going, which makes it more rewarding and fulfilling,” Elting notes.

In her spare time, Elting loves to read and is a self-described “news junkie.” With two teen sons, she loves to indulge in outdoorsy hobbies, like skiing and the beach, and looks forward to resuming travel when the time is right.

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Voice of Experience: Beth Renner, National Director of Philanthropic Services, Wells Fargo Private Bank

Beth Renner featured
As a mentor, Beth Renner knows that women often need to find their voice—and when they do, it can be a powerful booster charge to their career.

As she recounts, she was recently working with a long-term mentee who had finally applied for a position. When Renner had asked why she had hesitated, the mentee said she believed she didn’t have the entire skill set, but as they walked through the skill set and experience, it became clear that the position was a perfect fit. “Sometimes the biggest challenge is the messages we tell ourselves.”

Finding the Ideal Niche to Blend Personal and Professional Interests

Renner’s clear confident voice has brought her a 28-year career in the financial services industry, during which she has essentially touched every part of a financial services company. She started on the retail bank side as a personal banker; then was a credit officer with a small business lender; went into the fiduciary side as a private banker and trust manager, where she subsequently oversaw the fiduciary investment and brokerage side; and for the past eight years has worked in philanthropic services, where she currently has $26 billion in charitable assets under management for clients.

“The lifeblood of our business is the advice we provide our clients around their donations and assisting nonprofits in making sure they are sustainable,” Renner explains. Having always been personally involved in charitable work with both her time and treasure, the chance to marry that in her professional life is the achievement of which she’s most proud.

“For me it’s not about achieving a certification or designation, but about what I do every day, and I’ve really found a home for myself in this area that allows me to align my personal and professional values,” she says.

A Sea Change in the Philanthropic World

As the country prepares for an impending generational “wealth transfer,” Renner finds several themes consistently emerging. First, as a matriarch or patriarch who is naturally at the maturing point is engaging in legacy planning, they are asking how they can ensure that their values will be represented. The goal is to engage multiple generations from the family in their philanthropic pursuits.

Others are wrestling with the question of how much to leave their kids and wondering how to engage philanthropy as a tool to stave off entitlement.

“Donors are viewing themselves as an investor in these causes more than ever before, and we are adjusting the advice we provide them to create a more disciplined process.” To that end, she has helped develop a series of philanthropic planning modules that they are currently honing through focus groups, and she looks forward to rolling them out. “It’s a pleasure to be able to work more deliberately on these issues and adjust our business to how our clients are telling us they need counsel.”

Renner has become attuned to the absolute value of listening with intention and mindfulness which is helping inform this new initiative. When her father passed away shortly after she turned 50, she hit a point of reflection. “It causes you to look at things differently, and one of the things that has stuck with me is the art of listening and how it helps you understand others and yourself. Being mindful means that if I’m in a situation where I’m listening to clients or my team and find myself having an internal reaction, it spurs me to dig deeper to figure out where it’s coming from.”

Finding a Mentor Helps Your Career Path

One thing Renner learned from her mentor early on in her career was to focus on developing transferrable skills. For example, you don’t just want to be an expert in credit analysis, but you need to know how to solve complex problems. “In any position, consider what skills you can learn that you don’t yet have or want to cultivate,” she says.

And today she encourages women to be intentional about mentoring other women. “Don’t wait to be asked; when you see someone with potential, proactively reach out to them,” she suggests. That’s because we all are a collection of our past experiences and to give someone that gift of your accumulated knowledge will allow them to make progress faster.

She takes that outlook to her work on Wells Fargo’s Women’s Team Member Network, a diversity and inclusion employee resource group she finds valuable for its focus on broadening everyone’s lens around diversity and how to foster and develop it.

Her outside philanthropic pursuits are a perfect match for her professional life: She is absolutely passionate about the American Red Cross, and is the national chair of the women’s giving group called the Tiffany Circle. The group has flourished in five different countries, and in her role she helps develop the strategy around mobilizing this women’s segment. “A lot of the work I do at Wells Fargo helps the Red Cross with their fundraising and stewardship because I can share national trends and the emerging role that women are playing in philanthropy,” Renner says.

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Women & Philanthropy: Dive Pirates to the Rescue

barbara-thompson1by Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

 

A woman gets thrown over a balcony by her abusive boyfriend. The fall breaks her back, leaving her disabled. A young Marine, while home on leave, gets hit by a drunk driver, rendering him paraplegic. A baby is born in Russia and spends part of her childhood in an orphanage before being adopted by an American couple. Both her feet and hands never fully formed in the womb, giving her a unique disability and appearance. What do these people have in common? All of them have found refuge in an organization that gives them the training, equipment, and knowledge necessary to become certified adaptive scuba divers.

 

The saying, “the perfect storm” refers to the simultaneous occurrence of weather events that, if taken individually, would be far less powerful than the storm resulting of their chance combination. According to Sophie Wimberley, a regional medical science liaison for a large company and advanced open water instructor, the Dive Pirates organization she co-founded with her long-time friend and dive instructor Barbara Thompson, the general manager of a project management consulting firm in the subsea oil & gas industry,

came together for many different reasons, but none in particular.

 

Consider it a perfect storm of their own making. “To this day I still can’t say why it was so important to me to start this organization. One thing led to another and it just seemed like the right thing to do. We could do it, so we did it; we discovered a need and decided to fill it. There was no grand plan,” Thompson said. Both Wimberley and Thompson had been scuba diving for years and kicking around the idea of the Dive Pirates, which originally was going to be a social club. “Barbara used to joke that in order to gain admittance, prospective members would have to play a practical joke on somebody,” Wimberley said.

 

The specifics of how the Dive Pirates idea transformed from being a carefree social club to a life changing organization, differs slightly depending on who you’re asking. Thompson says the idea came from an acquaintance who worked at a V.A. hospital and suggested she begin teaching young veterans of the Iraq war how to scuba dive as a form of rehabilitation. According to Wimberley, however, the decision was less coincidental and more of an emotional realization she had while sitting alone in a Denver hotel room. “I’ll never forget it,” Wimberley said. “It was shortly after the Iraq war began and I was sitting in my hotel room watching a news program about the veterans coming back from the war; many soldiers were coming back missing limbs. I immediately called Barbara and told her we had to get involved somehow.”

 

It has been reported that the number of amputees returning home from the war in Iraq is the highest since the Civil War. Though 90 percent of the wounded survive their injuries, they are returning to civilian life with amputations, major head injuries, and post traumatic stress disorder.  Coincidentally, adaptive divers are usually those with spinal cord injuries, neurological disorders, or amputations. The certified open water divers and dive leaders who volunteer their time and services to the Dive Pirates organization do not teach “handicapped scuba.” Adaptive diving is just that because it adapts the same training received by able-bodied divers to a person’s disability. Adaptive divers are accompanied by a “buddy” of their choosing that goes through the training process with them. Escorted divers, on the other hand, suffer from severe immobility or blindness and must be accompanied by a four-person dive team that includes at least one diver with leadership training in life saving or dive instruction.

 

The Dive Pirates began in 2003 and now have chapters all over the country, but it wasn’t until 2005 when they became a certified charitable foundation for adaptive scuba that they began actively recruiting and focusing on those injured in Iraq. The first marine injured in Iraq has been diving with the Pirates since 2005. Other war heroes include twenty-nine-year-old Dawn Halfaker, a former Army first lieutenant who was one of the first women injured in the war. Halfaker lost her right arm at a mere twenty-four years-old when a rocket-propelled grenade was shot into her Humvee.

 

According to Wimberley, water is the great equalizer. It is the one thing capable of making a disabled person feel able-bodied, as they float along weightlessly and peacefully just as everyone else. “Our participants want to be included as part of a group. Adaptive divers want to be integrated and not excluded from society,” Wimberley said. “We’ve heard gut-wrenching stories from some of our divers about being treated like less-than a person when they return to civilian life. This organization isn’t about me, or Barbara, or the board of directors, it’s about the people we’re helping. Scuba diving isn’t going to take away their pain or erase what happened to them, but it’s a positive step in the right direction.”

 

Saying that the Dive Pirates are changing lives is not an overstatement. Many of the participants would have never gone scuba diving if it weren’t for the organization. Aside from the cost of the gear and training, the idea of then being able to travel to a tropical location such as the Cayman Brac would seem out of the question and impossible for a disabled veteran with a small income. The Dive Pirates make all of this possible. An adaptive diver and their buddy can offer up any amount of money they can afford for their scuba gear, whatever they can’t afford is paid for by the organization. Each participant is also guaranteed a fully paid trip to the Cayman Brac, where they will stay at a resort and scuba dive on a daily basis.

 

According to Thompson, one of the unexpected pleasures of starting the organization has been seeing people pushed out of their comfort zones in a way that will ultimately benefit them. Learning to participate in such an unfamiliar activity and traveling to a faraway, exotic location can seem overwhelming for a disabled person who may have lost some of their self-confidence as a result of their injury, but the act of participating alone is life changing. “People who participate don’t have to say thank you,” Thompson said. “We can see we’ve made a big difference once they come out of the water for the first time. Just imagine spending a majority of your time in a wheelchair; being weightless in water would feel like freedom.”

 

Wimberley’s goal for the Pirates, aside from receiving an endowment to maintain the organization long-term, is to provide each and every adaptive diver with an exceptional experience- which is why they are taken to dive in the Caribbean Sea, as opposed to diving locally. Exceptional experiences, especially those inclusive of taking a large group of adaptive divers to an island paradise for some leisurely scuba diving, are not cheap. The training, gear, and trip cost about $4,000 for each adaptive diver and their buddy. Fortunately, donations, membership fees paid by able-bodied participants, and fundraisers such as their Music for Soldiers event, their golf tournament, and annual black tie ball in Houston, TX bring in the money the organization needs to stay afloat. “The process of becoming a charity isn’t easy, but thankfully we’ve encountered many patriotic Americans who want to support those who’ve served their country and have come home injured,” Thompson said.

 

Scuba diving isn’t just a novelty that a handful of fortunate, able-bodied souls get to experience while on an island getaway. Sophie and Barbara want Dive Pirates participants to become life-long divers with their buddies, as it provides them with an almost-magical way to interact. “They’re diving in silence and the only way to communicate is through sight and touch,” Wimberley said. “Scuba diving allows them to explore the world around them. It feels like peace on earth and they can be a part of it for a little while.”

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