If the past few days of my new job here are any indication, EverTrue is on the path to be one of the most influential young companies to hit the scene in a while. Yes, the team here has created incredibly robust products for non-profit fundraising, but it has something else, too: Passion. I could feel it in the room on my first day when we had an all-hands meeting. You can have the smartest people in the world, but if they don’t actually care that much about the problems their sophisticated technology is trying to solve, the product simply won’t be as robust. Every single person here shares an intense desire to enable the non-profit world to be better equipped to connect to and nurture their alumni and donor base. They care because each of them at one point was touched by a non-profit institution that somehow changed their life. I feel the same way and that is one of the main reasons I am here.
Here’s my story. My high school, St. Paul’s School in NH, gave me the opportunity to go to Japan for a transformational year abroad that literally changed my life. Harvard University and Harvard Business School gave me not only world-class educations and opened doors for me via their networks, but also gave me some of my dearest friendships. At Columbia Law School I was swarmed by some of the smartest people I have ever met and my horizons were expanded tremendously. (Yes, I am overeducated!) My children’s current elementary school has played an instrumental role in developing their intellects and their social conscience. The high school my son will attend in the fall is already making a difference in his life and he hasn’t even started there yet. Beyond schools, my father, brothers and I are all deeply indebted to Dana Farber Cancer Institute for keeping my mother alive for 3 more years than her original prognosis predicted. They say the one thing in life you cannot buy is time… well, Dana Farber gave us that impossible gift: 3 additional years with our mother… priceless! We are forever grateful.
I am committed to giving back to all nonprofits that do so much for all of us. I am going to do this via working with the world-class EverTrue team to enable every non-profit organization in the world to know that EverTrue’s product line is here to help them foster relationships with and between the very people they have positively influenced, and in that process help them raise even more money so that they can continue fulfilling their missions. I am proud to be EverTrue.