Community Leadership Awards: Meet the finalists

InvestmentNews and the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation have announced the finalists for the fourth annual Community Leadership Awards, which honor financial advisers who make a difference in their communities.

Sean and Leigh Anne Touhy, the couple who inspired the best-selling book and motion picture “The Blind Side,” will be the keynote speakers at the awards ceremony, to be held tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York.

Award categories include the Volunteer Team Award, the Mentoring Excellence Award, the Volunteer of the Year Award, the Community Service Award and — new this year — the Global Community Impact Award.

The Invest in Others Charitable Foundation donates $10,000 to the charity designated by each category’s honoree. It will also donate $500 to each of the finalists’ charities.

Proceeds from the awards dinner will go to the Boston-based Invest in Others Charitable Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) charity that supports philanthropic and volunteer activities among financial advisers in the United States.

Nearly 300 nominations were received for this year’s awards. Since 2009, this year’s 15 adviser finalists have donated a total of nearly $430,000 personally and raised more than $1.86 million through their charities, which serve causes such as needy and at-risk children, disease research and awareness campaigns, people with disabilities, community poverty and Haiti relief.

MIKE BERRY

Finalist: Volunteer of the Year
“We didn’t know the size of the hole we uncovered,” said Mike Berry, a partner at Colorado West Financial Advisors LLC in Grand Junction, Colo. (broker-dealer: Cambridge Investment Research Inc.), referring to the pandemic of child hunger in his community.

While walking his young daughter to school one day, he encountered a little girl crying from hunger. “I couldn’t get her out of my mind,” he remembers. Subsequently, he learned that 50% of Grand Junction’s children don’t eat anywhere except school.

Mr. Berry resolved to take action and created Kids Aid — a program that discreetly distributes extra food weekly to schoolchildren, mostly in elementary and middle school. The items are specially chosen for kids to prepare by themselves.

The program took off like wildfire, growing from a trial of 10 kids in the spring of 2008 to 1,800 kids in 37 schools in the fall of 2010. Four other communities are now replicating the program.

Mr. Berry’s work with Kids Aid grounds him. “[As advisers], we’re dealing with people with money versus dealing with children without food. It’s very humbling.”

“It’s important that we [in our industry] give back to the community — and show them we’re not just in it for our back pockets,” he said. ?

MICHELLE BRENNAN HALL

Finalist: Volunteer of the Year

After well-to-do Collin County in North Texas experienced explosive growth in the last few years, the recession has left area social services bursting at the seams, said Michelle Brennan Hall, a financial adviser with Brennan Financial Services in Dallas (broker-dealer: FSC Securities Corp.).

A longtime fundraiser for children’s causes, she decided to do something about it. “I’m an instigator,” she said.

Adapting an innovative fundraising model from another organization, Ms. Hall in 2007 co-founded Star Children’s Charity, which is run exclusively by members.

Up to 100 members, who pay annual dues of $500, run fundraising events and collaborate on charitable decisions. “Membership means ownership of the mission,” she said. It also means a requirement for active participation, such as leading an event.

The results are stunning. Star has raised nearly $1 million for seven beneficiary agencies since 2008.

Ms. Hall’s background as a financial adviser facilitates her charitable activities. “My life is about investing money, whether clients’ assets for their goals and objectives or members’ assets for local needs,” she said. “And donors and sponsors look for organizations they can trust.”

What is her advice to other would-be philanthropy founders? “Just do it. There’s no tomorrow.” ?

R. MARK SHEPHERD

Finalist: Volunteer of the Year

R. Mark Shepherd applies the same dedication and devotion to whomever he’s helping, whether financial clients or one-legged skiers.

For more than 10 years, Mr. Shepherd, principal of Shepherd Financial Partners in Winchester, Mass. (broker-dealer, LPL Financial), has been deeply involved with AbilityPlus Inc., a Waterville Valley, N.H.-based organization that provides adaptive sports programs such as skiing, biking, and water-skiing for people with disabilities.

More than 10,000 people have participated over the last decade, and the demand is tremendous — there are extremely few facilities in the U.S. set up solely to provide active outdoor fun for the physically challenged. The program attracts people nationally and internationally.

“We bring them to a place where they are on parity with everyone else,” Mr. Shepherd said. On a typical winter day, AbilityPlus enables skiing experiences for people with Down syndrome, brain injuries, cerebral palsy, autism and blindness, as well as amputees and severely injured service members from the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project.

Mr. Shepherd is energized by seeing all these folks whiz down the slopes in their specially adapted prostheses, skis, halters and sleds — some skiing alone, some guided by partners.

“It’s a gift we’re given every time we meet them,” he said. ?

RUTHIE LENTZ

Finalist: Global Community Impact

Ruthie Lentz makes a profound connection between her passion for helping people in Haiti and her work as a financial adviser.

“As stewards of wealth, we need to teach other people how to be good stewards … and part of good stewardship is thinking about the role of philanthropy in our lives,” she said.

During her first trip to Haiti in January 2005, Ms. Lentz, a Memphis, Tenn.-based first vice president of investments with Wells Fargo Advisors LLC, was floored by the attitude of the local people. “They have so little and yet are so willing to share with each other,” she said.

Since then, she has been the principal fundraiser for The West Tennessee Haiti Partnership, raising nearly $150,000 in 2009 for the program, which provided more than 3,000 Haitians with services such as scholarships, school supplies, teachers’ salaries and medicines for handicapped children.

What’s behind her fervor? “If you believe the phrase, “You measure your wealth not by the things you have but by the things for which you will not take any amount of money,’ then it behooves you to learn what these things of value are,” she said.

Working for Haiti has indeed clarified what is valuable to Ms. Lentz. ?

PAUL MARTEL

Finalist: Global Community Impact

Why does Paul Martel focus so much of his volunteer energy on needy children in a foreign country?

“I’ve seen poverty in the U.S., but not the same level of suffering — malnutrition, violence, abandoned children, parents watching their children die because they don’t have medical resources,” he said.

Mr. Martel, president and founder of YHB Investment Advisors Inc. of West Hartford, Conn. (primary custodians: Pershing LLC and The Charles Schwab Corp.), is the founder of the Centro Medico Integral “Dulce Refugio” in Riobamba, Ecuador, high in the Andes.

His international humanitarian involvement began 15 years ago when he and his wife fostered several Latin American children who were receiving lifesaving operations in area hospitals.

In 1997, Mr. Martel was invited to lead a medical mission to Colombia — an experience he has repeated another 11 times to countries such as Guatemala, Paraguay and Ecuador. By 2007, he was moved to open his own clinic in Riobamba. It provides free medical care to thousands of children in the city and its environs. Mr. Martel personally funds nearly all operating expenses.

The work is daunting but inspiring. “Being surrounded by poverty is not easy,” he said. “You can become overcome with the grief of the suffering, but if you focus on one person at a time, you can do a lot.” ?

BOB SOLIS

Finalist, Global Community Impact

Bob Solis and his family visited South Africa on a mission in 2004 and came face to face with the anguished lives of children orphaned by AIDS. Right then, he felt a calling that could not be stopped.

The following year, Mr. Solis, a senior vice president and financial adviser in Surprise, Ariz., with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, and his wife spent their life savings on a 70-acre farm 10,000 miles from home.

“Our lives are very short, and we realized we had an opportunity to do something with our limited time,” he explained.

In 2006, the South African farm became Open Arms Home for Children, now home to 40 children and expanding soon to welcome 30 more. Mr. Solis visits three times a year for a week at a time.

While it is difficult to be away from the action, he knows that he can best serve his charity by staying in Arizona to raise funds — which he has done very successfully.

In 2009 alone, he raised $405,000 from golf tournaments, child sponsorships, benefit concerts, informational house parties and individual donations.

His involvement with Open Arms motivates him professionally. “Having an outside interest makes your work more engaging, not less,” he said. ?

PHIL RICHARDS AND NORTH STAR RESOURCE GROUP

Finalist: Volunteer Team

Charitable giving is a way of life for the 300 advisers and employees of North Star Resource Group in Minneapolis (broker-dealer, Securian Financial Group Inc.).The firm’s financial advisers and other staff members have donated nearly $1.2 million to its charitable arm, The Scott Richards North Star Charitable Foundation, since it began in 2004.

Furthermore, company officers donate at least $150,000 annually to the foundation, which focuses on cystic fibrosis, breast cancer awareness, bikes for kids, the neurological disorder ataxia, bone marrow destroying myelofibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease — all causes that have touched employees personally.

North Star chairman and chief executive Phil Richards credits the organization’s philanthropic prowess to the fact that the example was set from the top. He established the foundation to “show leadership to inspire other people to do the right thing,” he said.

“There’s a lot of pain out there — the need is insatiable and takes everyone,” he said. From growing up in poverty to losing his son to myelofibrosis, Mr. Richards has transformed his own painful experiences into a zeal for giving.

Mr. Richards said that providing the opportunity for charitable engagement fosters employee retention and productivity. “It supports the mission of our company, and our [employees] feel like they are changing lives. It’s hard to leave a company with character,” he said. ?

TONY BLAUVELT, JANELLE BLAUVELT AND SHARRON HARLEY OF EDWARD JONES

Finalist: Volunteer Team

Tony Blauvelt, his wife, Janelle Blauvelt, and Sharron Harley, who work in Arlington, Texas, for Edward Jones, are so single-mindedly devoted to the Texas Lions Camp for children with disabilities, one would think it was their own personal project. But it’s not.

In fact, the camp is the primary focus for all Texas Lions Clubs, but the Blauvelts and Ms. Harley, working for their local Handley-Meadowbrook Lions Club, send the most campers (81 in 2010) of all 900-plus Lions Clubs in the state.

“The secret to doing what we do is that we’re good salespeople,” said Mr. Blauvelt, a financial adviser. “We have to “sell’ the parents on letting let their kids go to camp, [because they] can’t visualize their children with disabilities going away for a week on their own.”

The team members are also good communicators and organizers, spending more than 3,000 volunteer hours per year marketing the camp, fundraising and working with parents, nurses, physicians, teachers and administrators from various school districts to identify and enroll qualified campers.

The team’s motivation is simple. “The camp kids are like our own kids, and we all love doing this,” Mr. Blauvelt said.

Ms. Blauvelt and Ms. Harley are on-call branch-office administrators at the Jones office where they all work. ?

JOE DE SENA, MARY TERINO AND KATIE COLEMAN OF DE SENA TERINO & ASSOCIATES

Finalist: Volunteer Team

At the end of 2004, Joe De Sena was shocked when a couple — longtime clients and friends — came to close the account of their young son, who had died from leukemia only months after diagnosis. 

“That was a life-changing event for me,” said Mr. De Sena, a senior financial adviser with De Sena Terino & Associates in Melville, N.Y. (broker-dealer, Ameriprise Financial Services Inc.).

The Michael Magro Foundation was established in 2005, and Mr. De Sena embraced the cause in a big way, running marathons and raising $42,000 over the next three years. 

Company colleagues Mary Terino, an associate adviser, and Katie Coleman, a paraplanner and director of marketing, enthusiastically joined in, applying their considerable talents in grant writing and event planning, respectively. Their participation brought the foundation’s fundraising to the next level, helping to raise more than $150,000 during the past two years.

The foundation, focusing on the overlooked everyday needs of young cancer patients, has created Project SOAR, among other initiatives, to address the particular physical, educational, and social challenges they face when returning to school after treatment.

“We’re not looking for a cure for cancer,” Mr. De Sena said. “We just want to make life as pleasant as possible for kids with cancer and their families.” ?

LINDA HAINES

Finalist: Mentoring Excellence


“It’s definitely a labor of love,” said Linda Haines, a Vancouver, Wash.-based first vice president with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, who has been a leader of Young Women in Action for more than 10 years.

The nine week, after-school mentoring program, administered by the Vancouver School District Foundation, targets fifth grade girls from disadvantaged schools, and has served more than 3,000 students since 1992.

The young women learn about manners, friendship, beauty and hygiene, community service and career planning.

The ripple effect is palpable. Teachers and guidance counselors have reported that the program graduates are much better adapted and motivated to go to school than non-participants.

Over the years, and innumerable hours, Ms. Haines has streamlined processes to make the program easy to replicate — it costs less than $3,000 to implement and requires between 20 and 50 hours from program volunteers over a three-month period.

“As in my own life [as a financial adviser], I try to assist my clients and these young women to figure out what their goals and objectives are, create a plan to achieve them, work hard to stick with the plan, and adjust the plan as needed,” she said. ?

WILLIAM SPARKS

Finalist: Mentoring
Excellence

William Sparks believes in walking the talk of equality.

In 2002, his 5-year-old son, David, entered public school in tony Encinitas in Southern California, where 20% of the students were low-income and Hispanic, and 80% affluent and white. Noticing the Spanish-speaking kindergarteners relegated to a separate class, Mr. Sparks, a first vice president in San Diego with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and his wife, Sarah, fought to enroll their child in that class.

Three years later, after the school removed the soccer goal posts from its fields, Mr. Sparks personally sponsored an indoor soccer team for the Latino kids, many of whom were David’s friends.

In 2008, tired of repeatedly trying to improve conditions for low-income students and being stymied by the school’s bureaucratic requirements, Mr. Sparks and his wife incorporated Los Angelitos de Encinitas to make a difference.

Last year, the organization served 225 disadvantaged children with after-school programs in sports and exercise, art and drama, and academic assistance.

According to the bilingual Mr. Sparks, who works exclusively with high-net-worth Hispanic clients, “I always felt a moral emptiness, but my professional success allowed me to bring that [affluent] world to bear to help this other world.” ?

STEVE LAHRE

Finalist: Mentoring Excellence
“Mentoring high school kids is fun — it’s not work,” according to Steve Lahre, a San Diego-based senior vice president and financial adviser with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.

The former Peace Corps volunteer, who has two grown kids of his own, was the first to jump in when San Diego High School’s Academy of Finance inaugurated a mentoring program in 2007.

Three years later, due in large part to Mr. Lahre’s recruiting efforts, enrollment has grown from a handful of students to nearly 50. The program is currently open to juniors and seniors within the high school’s School of Business; sophomores will be eligible next year so that mentoring relationships may last for three years.

“These kids really need someone to look up to, to confide in — who’s not a friend or a teacher,” Mr. Lahre said. “It’s like being a surrogate parent — you look at their report cards, talk about their future.”

The time spent with each student is an individual decision and could be weekly or biweekly, Mr. Lahre said. It can be a very intense but relaxed process, he said. “It’s like being a grandparent — you don’t micromanage their lives.” ?

JOHN HYLAND

Finalist: Community Service
“I never understood or truly appreciated how cancer affects a family,” said John Hyland, managing partner of Morristown (N.J.) Financial Group (broker dealer: LPL Financial).

“The impact is massive,” he said. “It’s like getting hit by a bus. For some cases, like mine, you get the diagnosis and go straight to the hospital.”

Mr. Hyland began volunteering with The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in 1993 in honor of an aunt who had died of acute myeloid leukemia the year before. He has been a board member for 10 years and now serves as board president. Last spring, in what he calls a “twisted irony,” he too was diagnosed with AML and is currently undergoing treatment.

Year after year, Mr. Hyland has successfully led his chapter to raise approximately $6 million a year, serving about 1,000 New Jersey patients and their families. The funding supports research and clinical trials, financial aid for needy patients, education, support groups and peer-to-peer counseling (pairing patients with others who have lived through the same disease).

“We have tremendous return on investment,” said Mr. Hyland, citing years of LLS-funded research that led to greater knowledge about chemotherapy, radiation therapy, bone marrow transplants and targeted cancer therapy. ?

RANDY LILLARD

Finalist: Community Service

Randy Lillard has served on the board of Agape Child and Family Services Inc. in Memphis, Tenn., for 14 years. His reason is simple: “Life is best lived when living for the benefit of others.”

Representing the second generation of Agape volunteers, Mr. Lillard, a financial adviser in Bartlett, Tenn., with Edward Jones, is following in the footsteps of his wife’s parents and setting the example for his children, who also donate their time.

The agency, which served 25,000 people in 2009, provides services in the areas of adoption and foster care, counseling, and transitional housing and homeless services. Its newest program, Powerlines Community Network, takes a holistic approach to serving disadvantaged neighborhoods by providing on-site representatives who assess needs, and coordinate and provide social and educational services to an entire community.

Service is Mr. Lillard’s passion. He and his wife have served as foster parents to more than 20 children since 1991.

He brings a particular strength to his volunteer service: helping his colleagues stay focused on the spiritual nature of their mission. He reminds us all: “Sometimes in organizations, we forget what we are really about.” ?

D. TIMOTHY PINKNEY

Finalist: Community Service

With unstoppable enthusiasm, D. Timothy Pinkney led the Rotary Club of Sacramento — the ninth-largest Rotary Club in the world — with “optimism, cheerfulness and acceptance to … celebrate what could be accomplished during a down economy,” in his words.

Mr. Pinkney, a principal at The Savant Group in Citrus Heights, Calif. (primary custodian: Fidelity Investments), relished the tremendous responsibility of his presidency.

It required him to spend 30 to 40 hours per week overseeing the chapter’s 79 operating committees. He raised $88,000 of the $350,000 brought in clubwide. The 450-member club supports 23 local and international community organizations, and some fundraising projects exceeded goals under his leadership.

He also established stretch goals in the areas of membership, public relations, club service and outreach, achieving seven out of nine.

Where did he get his moxie? Taking the cue from his entrepreneurial parents, Mr. Pinkney recognized his own leadership abilities in high school and never looked back. He set goals for himself at every stage of his life, applying vision and determination to his leadership roles in academic, military, civic and business arenas.

Mr. Pinkney sums up his philosophy in a personal equation: “Confidence in self + goal setting + tenacity = success.”

“The synergy of these dynamics is a powerful force,” he said. ?