Who do you call, when you want to change the world? Mrs. Mary Ehrsam is who.
She has been my global travel-the-world-for-HOPE companion, including South Africa (she and I have been there together more than 35 times each) and Morocco (we opened offices in South Africa and had a special initiative in Morocco) and more on the African continent.
She has been with me throughout the Middle East (she stood up offices in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for HOPE, teaching financial literacy).
She has been my side kick as we traveled to France for the OECD Annual Meeting where Operation HOPE was featured as a best practice.
She also pioneered our financial literacy work for youth in public schools first in Los Angeles, and thereafter throughout the nation, featuring our Banking on Our Future Program, which is now part of HOPE Inside for Kids.
She was an early pioneer that forged many of our global agreements, including our landmark partnership with the Peace Corp, where they began the process of embedding financial literacy into the fiber of their teachings in villages in Sub-Saharan Africa.
All of our landmark partnerships with leading financial firsts in Manhattan, has Mary’s fingerprints on them.
And all of this and more, is why she was named president for HOPE Partnerships, globally for Operation HOPE. And why to this day, I always call on her when I need to get things done and to advance the ball around our partnership model.
