Volunteering Heroes

Many years ago, I started volunteering for the Florida Palm Beach County Special Olympics. Helping out that organization makes me extremely happy, seeing the joy on the faces of kids and adults with disabilities and connecting with them. Volunteering at Special Olympics brings me as much happiness as it does the people who I work with there, and I just always wanted to give back to that.

I’ve been an athlete my whole life and used to push my family’s Jeep Grand Cherokee through the neighborhood for exercise. One day, I came across an article about a man in Croatia who set a world record for the farthest distance pushing a car for 24 hours. I immediately thought I could probably take this record myself.  Why not try it?  It’s worth a shot! So I came up with a plan to try to break the record while raising money and awareness for Special Olympics.

For more than three decades I’ve chaired the foundation’s holiday party. It’s an event for children affected by brain tumors, and their families, so brothers and sisters can join in on the fun too. What makes the event so very special is that it gives families a chance to make memories together while providing parents with the opportunity to connect with other families who understand what they’re going through.

I set up a website explaining the project and set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for Special Olympics Florida. I also purchased a 1,800-pound SmartCar that was similar to the one used by the record holder and used it to train. The car was auctioned after the record attempt, with the money going to Special Olympics.

Once word got out about the project, many people and groups offered help; I had two sponsors whose logos went on the car, a local restaurant pledged to match whatever money was raised and a community volunteer organization made a big donation. People even pledge money for every mile that I pushed the car.

The journey was incredible and while I ultimately fell short of the record, I was able to push the car for the entire 24hrs. Even though the team had to deal with deflated tires, camera failure, lack of nutrition, and other issues, we had a great time and more importantly, were able to raise a sizeable amount of money for Special Olympics. We have already started discussing strategies for next time and plan on doing something like annually.

I’ve worked in the insurance industry for more than 30 years. I know tragic things happen to people all the time, but losing a child must be the worst pain of all.

That’s why I started working with the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and I use my Cares volunteering hours to support this incredible organization.

For more than three decades I’ve chaired the Foundation’s holiday party. It’s an event for children affected by brain tumors, and their families, so brothers and sisters can join in on the fun too. What makes the event so very special is that it gives families a chance to make memories together while providing parents with the opportunity to connect with other families who understand what they’re going through.

Many of my friends and colleagues have also used their time to support the Foundation as well. Once people see what the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation does, or if they attend one of the holiday events, they are usually compelled to start helping more regularly.

Thanks to a willingness to help from so many people in the insurance industry, we’ve been able to host events at our office in Atlanta and provide parents with an opportunity to meet with health experts, attorneys, financial advisors, and other professionals who can offer practical support when it’s needed most.

Over the years, there have been many moments when I felt immensely proud to be working with this inspiring organization. When I first started working with the Foundation, I met a little girl named Heidi who was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was just two years old. She beat the disease and has grown up and today works as a teacher. She attends our holiday party every year and gives hope to so many families.

Heidi is just one of the heroes I’ve met through this volunteering with the Foundation and it is a great honor to help these brave children.

I grew up in the Republic of Georgia and my wife is from Ukraine, so the recent conflict has had a big impact on our home countries and close family.

My wife’s family fled from Kyiv to Western Europe. Some went to the Netherlands, where they are living in shared accommodations with their young children. They are desperate to return home but are afraid of course. My father-in-law chose to remain in Kyiv so we are very worried about him.

In an effort to help, I’ve been using my Cares time to organize crowd-funding campaigns to support people in Ukraine. With the help of many generous people, we’ve been able to raise enough to buy five ambulances and medical supplies.

I have driven two of the ambulances to Ukraine by myself and volunteers have helped to drive the others.  We packed them with toys for local children and food parcels.

I’m extremely grateful that LexisNexis Risk Solutions allows me to take time to work on this project, and that so many colleagues have supported me along the way. The ambulances and the supplies we delivered will help a lot of people who are facing unimaginably difficult times. My wife has been an amazing partner in the effort too; she’s been working incredibly hard to gather medical supplies, food parcels, and more.

At a time when people wonder how they can possibly help, I hope this project can serve as an example of how there are practical ways we can all make a difference.

Outside my work as a lawyer, I have volunteered more than 7,000 hours as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in my hometown ― Westport, Connecticut. During the COVID-19 pandemic, on weekends I traveled from Georgia back to Connecticut where my family lived and volunteered over 700 hours in the ambulance.

Much of my responsibility as the supervisor on my ambulance shift is to provide a level of care so that when we arrive at the hospital we’ve stabilized or even improved the situation to help patients get through their crisis. As pre-hospital caregivers, EMTs don’t usually find out the long-term outcomes of the people we care for after we transfer our patients over to the emergency room staff.  

One of the most memorable events that I remember was on Christmas Eve several years ago when a paramedic and I responded to a cardiac arrest call. After we arrived, we were able to resuscitate the patient so that she had a heart rhythm when we transported her to the hospital. We were uncertain if she would survive, or have permanent brain damage due to the length of time that had lapsed since her heart stopped. About three months later we received a handwritten thank you note at EMS headquarters from the woman we had helped. She told us that she was an elementary school teacher and wanted us to know that everything turned out really well and that she had made a full recovery. It was nice to find out that you’ve helped someone in a meaningful way, especially folks who are able to continue contributing to the community by helping the kids at an elementary school as a teacher.

Stories like this remind me of how important my volunteer work is ― and how we all need to hit our reset buttons every once in a while and focus on the real priorities in life. Many of us get caught up in the whirlwind of our daily lives and forget to recognize those at work and at home who make our lives a bit more manageable, fun, and sometimes a bit safer.

We have the flexibility to take our Cares hours when we want to and use them in a way that really means something to us as employees. I enjoy getting a chance to give something back and I’m delighted that so many of my colleagues are supporting our efforts.

At the beginning of 2021, Jackie, a 60-year-old mum to thirteen grown-up children, could hardly read. Now she’s reading bedtime stories to her grandkids ― and I’m so proud to have helped her!

I use my Cares time to support the charity ReadEasy in Wythenshawe, an area not far from my home where adult literacy levels are among the lowest in the UK.

My wife Ann has been on the management committee for ReadEasy for some time now, and after hearing that they were looking for coaches to help teach people to read, I decided I wanted to get involved and use my Cares hours to help train an adult to read.

I was soon paired with Jackie and it was clear from the start that she was keen to learn. We met up twice a week for 30 minutes over the course of 18 months ― either in person or via a video call ― and she’s made incredible progress. We always have a great laugh together too. I am now proud to call her a friend and I was recently invited to her 60th birthday celebrations.

Jackie has even joined a local community group and has found that being able to read has given her a lot more confidence to get involved.

I’m extremely proud of her and grateful that I’ve been able to help her achieve such a big goal. We can all do something to help someone.

Perhaps no single person or organization can observe all the human behaviors that add up to this kind of criminality, but human traffickers leave digital footprints. And there’s one common tie between all kinds of trafficking — money laundering.

In college, it really hit me that the internet could quickly become a grooming and feeding ground for pedophiles such as the individual who had victimized my young relative when I was a child. That prospect lit a fire in me.

But it wasn’t until I began my career that I began to sense the overwhelming power of technology ecosystems to scale and conceal human crime networks. And that’s when I also recognized that collaborative technology ecosystems were also the key to fighting them.

I use my Cares hours as a volunteer with The Knoble, a non-profit organization that brings together businesses, non-profits, law enforcement, and regulators to combat human trafficking and other abuse of society’s most vulnerable ― from a financial angle. The Knoble, which is one of our Cares partner organizations, was founded in 2019 and I had the pleasure of working on their first major venture: Project Umbra. The project draws on sophisticated data tools to develop new ways to identify accounts that exhibit signs of risk related to online child sexual exploitation.

It's projects like these, where we collaborate to fight human trafficking to ultimately help victims, that give me a renewed sense of purpose in my day-to-day work in financial crime compliance. I am grateful to work for a company that supports this project and allows me to dedicate my time to help as well.