A letter from board director Mark Rosica
Dear Friends,
I spent considerable time with Bill McGowan when he was building the company and in the early days of MCI. When I was in graduate school, I would go down and visit him for weeks at a time, and he was just this great, fun, brilliant guy that impressed the heck out of me. When I was younger, my brother and I took a bus to New York City to see him, and he got us tickets to the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. He was a wonderful man, and he was a very good uncle. Bill would literally speed-read 7 to 10 newspapers a day. He had an unbelievable brain. He also loved to listen to people talk—he was always taking everything in. At the time, it felt like he was part of a group that was trying to buck the system; they were all highly intelligent, highly motivated, interesting, and creative people.
I think Bill would be proud of what we’re doing as a board, and I’m sure there are things he would have done differently, too. We have maintained the original intent of the first board trustees and have been flexible enough to try new things as well. We’ve leaned toward evidence-based programs and ideas, been responsive to our community needs, and been willing to try out ideas and programs that work toward helping people out of trauma and fighting for basic needs to become productive and involved members of their community. Bill often said, “Opportunity is all that is needed to find one’s potential.” He was always saying little things worth remembering because he was really an educator at heart. He loved to find something insightful and meaningful and share that with people.
I spent 40 years in higher education, watching what education can do and the opportunities it opens for people. In many ways, I often worked with students to help them learn how to learn, whether through problem solving, gaining a perspective on an issue, or sometimes just the basics like focusing on reading and writing skills. There are some serious education problems in this country and if we don’t do more to help kids get to grade level by second or third grade, our future as a country and workforce may face setbacks. I’ve seen students who could not adequately read or write manage to graduate high school. These students were missing the most fundamental tools of learning, and that loss will deeply impact their prospects. Personally and as a board, our goal is to help people become self-sufficient, productive, and satisfied members of their communities. And we want that self-sufficiency to trickle down to the next generation.
The crux of what we do is helping people in our communities get past their situation or where they are sometimes stuck—you can’t be creative or productive at your work if you go to bed or work hungry. You can’t do your best thinking if you are constantly worried about bills, rent, or groceries. That’s why we’re focused so much on the basics: food, shelter, education, and training. There are people in crisis all over the country. Our grantees—the people who lead these efforts—are visionaries, mold breakers, thinkers of tomorrow who know what opportunity can bring to people. They’re mavericks like my uncle Bill, and working alongside them to help fix the larger problems we see in our communities—such as food insecurity—helps pay tribute to Bill’s legacy.
Sincerely,
Mark Rosica
Board Director