Last week, at our first annual Leadership Celebration, we honored dedicated volunteers, Mission Movers, people and organizations that have gone to extraordinary lengths to advance our cause. This year our Mission Movers include: Dani Jachino, Ruth Reko, Bankers Life, Alan Krashesky, Alex Magiera and Phoebe Stone-Nitekman from the JEMP-D Foundation.
Last week, at our first annual Leadership Celebration, we honored dedicated volunteers, Mission Movers, people and organizations that have gone to extraordinary lengths to advance our cause. This year our Mission Movers include: Dani Jachino, Ruth Reko, Bankers Life, Alan Krashesky, Alex Magiera and Phoebe Stone-Nitekman from the JEMP-D Foundation.
Advocate
Dani Jachino’s commitment to the fight against Alzheimer’s disease is unwavering, and that passion is complimented by an incredible sense of humor, joyousness and level of subject-matter expertise. Following her mother’s diagnosis, Dani began attending Association support groups. She quickly became a support group facilitator, and has since become one of the Association’s top fundraisers, an indispensable part of the Walk to End Alzheimer’s® on Chicago’s planning committee, a member of the Greater Illinois Chapter’s Board of Directors, a congressional Ambassador and, most recently, a member of our Constituent Advocate Program. Tonight, we honor all of her work building support on Capitol Hill and in Springfield for Alzheimer’s disease research funding and dementia-capable laws.
Volunteer
Ruth Reko brings dedication and empathy in its purest form to her volunteer role. Ruth connected with the Greater Illinois Chapter in October, 2010 after reviewing a posting regarding the need for Helpline volunteers, and has since contributed 3,000+ hours and counting of her time and talents to helping those in need. If that weren’t enough, Ruth is also an Ambassador with the Public Policy team working to enhance the Association’s federal government relations through personal contact with targeted members of Congress. In this role, Ruth assists the Association to meet its federal legislative goals by working with staff to implement federal advocacy activities at the community level. She also attends our annual Illinois Action Summit, held at the state capitol in Springfield working with other advocates to make Illinois a dementia capable state.
Corporate Partner
Bankers Life agents and employees witness firsthand the impact that Alzheimer’s disease has on its customers, their families and their caregivers. That’s why in 2003 this Chicago-based company established Forget Me Not Days®, a nationwide fundraising campaign to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association. What started as a grassroots fundraiser has blossomed into a national fundraising campaign that has helped raise more than $3.3 million nationally for the Alzheimer’s Association through Forget Me Not Days® collections and corporate donations and more than $200,000 in Illinois for the Association. Complementing the Forget Me Not Days® campaign is Bankers’ partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s®. Including corporate sponsorship and teams, this represents additional generosity of more than $200,000 for the Association in Illinois.
Community Partner
Award-winning journalist Alan Krashesky has been a dedicated partner and friend of the Alzheimer’s Association, Greater Illinois Chapter, donating countless hours, serving as a local spokesman and most notably, as host of the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Chicago for more than 15 years. Sadly, Alan knows all too well the damage that Alzheimer’s disease does to families across our country every day: he first got involved after his mother was diagnosed. Not long after she passed away, his mother-in-law was diagnosed with the disease. Like all of the leaders in this room, this experience fueled in him a desire to act and he has been a great champion of our organization and our cause.
Junior Board Leader
At the age of 15, Alex Magiera was forced to live and breathe Alzheimer’s disease, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Her mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 50. As with all of the other people whose leadership is being celebrated tonight, Alex took an incredible source of pain and is using it to change the lives of others for the better. Regularly speaking on behalf of our chapter and the national organization, Alex has traveled the state and country fearlessly sharing her story. An educator and graduate of Pepperdine University, she is actively involved in the Junior Board’s fundraising and public service efforts. As the Junior Board’s Chair of Web Communications, she is showing the next generation why, until a cure is discovered, our fight is their fight too.
Philanthropist
You might say that fighting Alzheimer’s disease is the family business for Phoebe Stone-Nitekman along with her sisters and cousins. Together they form the JEMP-D Foundation and have been supporting the Alzheimer’s Association practically since its founding over 30 years ago. The programs that are most compelling to the JEMP-D directors are the ones that reach under-served populations, providing care and support services to those most in need. Their support of Association programs that reach diverse communities has been instrumental in allowing the chapter to reach many more individuals who need Alzheimer’s information and support.