About My Job: A Foundation Serving New Yorkers

Mother Cabrini statue on our office windowsill (photo: me 🙂)

Reprinted with permission: a message from Msgr. Gregory Mustaciuolo, CEO of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation

Today, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation announced a new round of more than 400 grants totaling $115 million for programs serving vulnerable New Yorkers to help address health gaps across our state.

These funds will go to community-based organizations, food banks, healthcare providers, nursing homes, schools, federally qualified health centers, and others that are on the front lines providing crucial services to New Yorkers in need: groups such as low-income individuals and families; older adults; youth and young adults; persons with special needs; immigrants and migrant workers; veterans; formerly incarcerated individuals; and young children, pregnant women, and new moms.

So many organizations demonstrated resilience, creativity, and flexibility over the past year. Our grants reflect a commitment to these essential nonprofits and providers, which are the bedrock of a healthy and equitable future in New York.

Our grants support a wide range of urgent health needs and social determinants of health across New York State. These grantees include organizations such as the Food Bank of NYC, which promotes food security for the ever-increasing number of hungry New Yorkers; the Immigrant Justice Corps, which supports access to legal counsel for low-income immigrants; Le Moyne College, which provides nursing school scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds; and Veterans One-Stop Center of WNY, which bolsters veterans as they transition from military to civilian life.

Grantees will also address chronic racial healthcare disparities that have only been heightened since the onset of the pandemic in New York. These programs include a grant for the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health to conduct a New York City-wide community needs assessment of social determinants of health, as well as grants and scholarships to organizations such as Hunter College, Iroquois Healthcare Association, and Associated Medical Schools of New York to promote workforce development opportunities for underrepresented groups in the healthcare profession.

Alongside these grants, we are rolling out the Foundation’s first statewide strategic program, focused on improving dental health access and outcomes in some of New York’s most underserved communities. The $5 million in grants will purchase five new mobile dental vans statewide and subsidize the expansion of mobile van services in an additional program.

During this time of transition and recovery, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation must seize the moment not only to meet urgent needs but address longstanding inequities.

Now is the time to lay the foundation for a healthier and more resilient New York.

Though we have seen a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel, especially with the introduction of vaccines, the pandemic has deepened longstanding disparities in healthcare access and outcomes. New York’s health and social services providers continue to need our unwavering support during this time of heightened community needs.

See a list of year-end 2020 Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Grantees.

See more details on our grantees here.

What Inspires You Lately?

June 7 in New Milford, NJ

What has inspired you lately?

In these unique and challenging times, I am often inspired... and challenged to be better... by the good I see in others.

As communications director for the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, I see the great work being promoted recently on Facebook and Twitter by our grantees throughout New York State:

Restocking food pantries, supporting COVID-19 testing programs and providing additional nursing support are just some of the many initiatives supported by our Foundation. I am inspired by the self-sacrifice, dedication and community spirit I see among the grantees.

Last month, I was inspired when reading about Roman Suarez, a New Yorker who didn't leave the city during lockdown (as The New York Times noted so many residents had). He dedicated himself to picking up medication and groceries for three dozen family members in the Bronx. I posted more here, referencing "The Great Gatsby" to say he was worth the whole bunch of fleeing New Yorkers put together.

This past weekend, in my suburban hometown of New Milford, NJ, I was inspired by the peaceful, earnest resolve of those who organized and attended a Black Lives Matter rally on the grounds in front of our police station and borough hall.

Families with young children and babies in strollers, high school and college students, curious older residents and police officers stood in respectful silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. The organizers spoke from a small gazebo (adopted and maintained by Girl Scouts Troop 97527), using a toy karaoke machine plugged to a portable generator in a van parked nearby.

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For further inspiration, I have my old standbys: literature and music and art.

Usually, I re-read "Gatsby" every Memorial Day weekend, but this year I settled for having recently watched the movie instead. I recalled on Twitter how once, driving my daughter back to college in DC, we had listened to the book together...

I can't seem to concentrate enough to read books lately, though. My mind frets and wanders.

Music is always a comfort. I've been enjoying the intimate "concerts" from the homes of some of my favorite musicians. I was also inspired by this story last weekend, again in The Times: "5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Cello."

The Times asked Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others to pick cello music that moves them. They posted brief commentaries about their selections. While viewing their words online, you could also listen to their choices.

Two of the selections from Bach reminded me of life after college. I lived in Manhattan, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a concert cellist who loved Bach. On weekends, he would give kids cello lessons in our living room. Recalling those sounds from my bedroom on Saturday mornings -- when anything was possible -- is one of the best, most inspiring memories in my life.

Here's the haunting selection from Bach's Cello Suite No. 5 (choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's favorite), as included in The Times.

Finally, about art.

One local painter I admire, Said Elatab from Paterson, NJ, has a tendency to burn his work whenever he is sad or outraged. He posted this on Instagram last week, urging others to share it:

He wrote that this was his way of expressing his feelings until there is justice in America.

I am inspired by Said's passion. Mostly, though, I am inspired by the underlying message of his literal fire. "Nothing is permanent," the artist reminds us. 

We should support each other. We should value people, not things. We should appreciate what is here today.

I am inspired by these beliefs.

In these unique and challenging times, what inspires you?

A Job Where Anything Is Possible

Imagine a PR controversy involving Mother Frances Cabrini -- a woman who is, literally, America's first saint.

It happened in New York this summer.

Just this past weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it an "affront" that Mother Cabrini had been passed over by She Built NYC. That's the public-arts campaign that will install monuments to honor pioneering women for their extraordinary contributions to the city.

In August, the first six monuments were announced. All the women chosen deserve the honor. But Mother Cabrini -- a tireless advocate for the city's immigrants, children and the poor -- was not among those chosen.

This was controversial because Mother Cabrini was by far the most popular choice in a public vote when She Built NYC solicited input from New Yorkers about who they should first honor.

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Just days after the selection of these first six monuments, I thought about this PR situation as I sat in the reception area of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation offices in Manhattan.

In December, this organization would begin announcing up to $150 million in annual grants to under-served New Yorkers -- and it was looking to hire its first director of communications.

I wanted this job very much. As I waited to be interviewed, I considered how the Foundation's values were based on Mother Cabrini's values, and how its grants will help generations of New Yorkers of all faiths... or no faith at all.

A depiction of Mother Cabrini in stained glass stands in the reception area. She holds a pen and open book inscribed in Latin. I plugged the words into Google, and the translation was a powerful affirmation: "Anything is possible through the one who gives me strength."

During the job interview, I broached the subject of the monument snub.

In the back of my mind, I had what I thought would be a clever take on the situation.

I'd tell Msgr. Greg Mustaciuolo, the Foundation's CEO, that this wasn't a PR issue after all because Mother Cabrini would never have wanted a monument of herself. That would fly in the face of everything she stood for: selfless devotion in service to others.

Instead, Msgr. Greg smiled and offered a refreshing perspective. He noted that She Built NYC had evidently not spoken with current Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus before making its selection.

"If they had," he said, "they would have announced the building of six monuments to Mother Cabrini -- one in each borough and two in Manhattan."

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That was my next-to-last interview for the job. Before the final interview, I set out on a mission to discover as much as possible about Mother Cabrini's work.

Research showed that Mother Cabrini herself was as resilient as any monument. She had twice cheated death.

In a novelization of the saint's life by Nicole Gregory, I learned that Francesca Cabrini was a sickly child, the youngest of 13. She lived in northern Italy, near the home of my paternal grandparents.

At age 7, she survived a near drowning. Late in life, after building 67 schools, hospitals and orphanages worldwide, she again avoided disaster. She had been scheduled to make a transatlantic crossing on the Titanic's maiden voyage. Instead, she decided to return New York earlier to supervise the expansion of one of her hospitals.

She even seemed to defy death after death itself. Her body was interred behind clear glass beneath the altar of the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine in upper Manhattan.

I visited this shrine last month.

I roamed the grounds before The Allegro Singers presented "A Grand Opera Concert" on a Sunday afternoon in the shrine's chapel. (I loved that the job was based in New York, where diversity of thought, culture and art is readily available and celebrated. Here, for example, is a sample of soprano Alexis Cregger singing Verdi's "Ave Maria" in Italian that day.)

Baritone Charles Gray sings a selection from Mozart's "Figaro"

Amid the beautiful music and religious imagery, I learned many things about Mother Cabrini. As it turns out, as a display next to the altar explained, her body was not incorruptible.

Human as she was, Mother Cabrini's accomplishments were super-human. My immigrant Italian grandparents, as well as extended family and my maternal Polish grandparents who arrived in New York to seek a better life, owe her a great debt of gratitude.

In 1889, New York seemed to be filled with chaos and poverty. Upon stepping into this new world, Mother Cabrini and her Missionary Sisters cared for the sick. They sheltered and educated homeless orphans and families. They also established institutions that benefitted future generations.

In 2019 and beyond, this is the spirit of the programs the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation will support.

The Foundation itself is Mother Cabrini's monument in New York.

It is designed to be deathless, existing in perpetuity to improve the well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers statewide.

So I'm excited to write that next week I will begin work as director of communications for the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.

I'm humbled too. I know that if the work of the Foundation lives up to its namesake, anything is possible.

The altar at St. Frances Cabrini Shrine in NYC