Hello, Pearl Team!
Welcome to March! We have a lot to look forward to this month – Daylight savings time happens on March 12th. We also recognize St. Patrick’s Day, National Good Samaritan Day, Earth Hour, Women’s History Month and National Kidney Month. National Good Samaritan Day is one I’d like to quickly highlight because it is so close to what our culture tries to capture – it is a day to encourage selflessness and kindness in all its forms among people. Also known as Good Samaritan Involvement Day, the term is used to describe people who perform acts of sympathy, especially to strangers, who need help or support. Look around you when you are out and about and find ways that you can be that “Good Samaritan” on this day, and all others.
Another acknowledgement this month is Women’s History Month. I’d like to take a moment to mention some women that I’ve looked up to in my own journey. The women listed below truly lived their trailblazing, entrepreneurial, won’t-take-no mentality to reach their goals.
Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove) made her mark in the early 1900’s as a noted civil rights activist, philanthropist, and one of the first African American entrepreneurs in the United States. She also maintains the title of the first female, self-made millionaire in America. Struggling as a widow and mother to a young daughter, Madam suffered from a common scalp ailment that resulted in the loss of hair and developed a hair product that went on to “revolutionize” African American hair care. Originally, she sold her hair care products directly to women, but as her success grew, she established Madam C.J. Walker as a formal business entity. During her time as the founder and CEO, she trained over 40,000 women, giving them jobs as consultants who could educate consumers and sell her haircare products. In addition to creating hair products, she established distribution centers to ensure that her 3,000 door-to-door salespeople—most of whom were Black women—had plenty to sell, and she also founded a cosmetology school to train them. Following her financial success, Walker became a well-known philanthropist, funding scholarships for women at the Tuskegee Institute and donating to social services for orphans, the elderly and migrants. Perhaps part of her success can be attributed to her belief that we must “understand that [our] first duty is to humanity”.
Ruth Fertel was a divorced mother of two boys and was looking for a way to earn more money than her lab tech job provided. At the same time, the Chris Steak House was up for sale, a move that came after a series of failures. After mortgaging her home, Ruth took over the steak house, and when the original location burned down, she re-opened under what has become a name synonymous with upscale restaurant chains – Ruth’s Chris Steak House. After serving up success for a few years, Ruth eventually agreed to franchise her restaurant, and the rest is history. Today, there are over 150 Ruth’s Chris locations serving hungry customers the signature filets as well as numerous other gourmet plates. Her secret for success? Unwavering hospitality — “We went out of our way to please customers. We spoiled them.”
Deb Haaland made history in March 2021, when she was confirmed as the Secretary of the Interior of the United States—the first Indigenous person of any gender to hold a Cabinet position. A member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland has spent much of her career focused on environmental justice and climate change. She is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo. The Pueblo people have lived on the land that is now the state of New Mexico since the 1200s and she identifies herself as a 35th-generation New Mexican. Her mother, Mary Toya, a Native American woman, served in the United States Navy and her father, Major John David “Dutch” Haaland, was an officer in the United States Marine Corps and recipient of the Silver Star for his actions in Vietnam. As a military child, she moved often and attended 13 public schools across the United States before her family settled in New Mexico. Days after graduating, she gave birth to her daughter and started a salsa company to support herself and her child, but often that did not pay enough to pay for food and shelter, so she relied on food stamps and friends for support. She pushed through eventually earning her Juris Doctorate in Indian law and became the first chairwoman elected to the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors whose purpose is to strengthen the Laguna community and its economy.
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a leader in her own right and involved in numerous humanitarian causes throughout her life. By the 1920s, Roosevelt, who raised five children, was involved in politics and numerous social reform organizations. After President Roosevelt’s death, Eleanor was a delegate to the United Nations and continued to serve as an advocate for a wide range of human rights issues. She was an early champion of civil rights for African Americans as well as an advocate for American workers, the poor, young people, and women during the Great Depression. Roosevelt encouraged her husband to appoint more women to federal positions, and she held hundreds of press conferences for female reporters only at a time when women were typically barred from White House press conferences. She remained active in Democratic causes and was a prolific writer until her death at age 78.
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” —Amelia Earhart, Aviation pioneer and author
Thank you,
Merry Korn, MSW
CEO