The Interns and Sister Mary
Last Summer the Insurance Federation of New York (IFNY), an organization whose members represent a diverse group of insurance professionals in the Metropolitan New York City area, implemented an extraordinary internship program in partnership with the charitable organization Yes!Solutions. Under the program, six motivated high school students from extremely difficult backgrounds and circumstances, were exposed to the working environment and people at participating insurance companies and professional firms over an eight-week period. My Insight Column in the April 22, 2013 issue of Insurance Advocate magazine (www.insurance-advocate.com) discusses this program and its value not just to the interns, but to the industry as well. Click here for a pdf copy of the column. For more information on the IFNY Intern Program including information on how you can help, I urge you to go to the IFNY website at www.ifny.org.
While IFNY’s sponsorship was invaluable to making the program possible, the other half of the story is Yes!Solutions, one of the alter egos of a very extraordinary woman, Mary Lanning. It was Mary, an insurance industry lifer as well as a nun in the service-oriented Sisters for Christian Community, who developed, promoted, implemented, sold, cajoled, monitored, prodded, corralled and shepherded the program, the interns and the industry participants. It is impossible to fully explain or comprehend the magnitude of all that Mary does for our industry and for those in need. Back in 2002, one of Mary’s innumerable friends, Meg Fletcher, wrote a wonderful bio of Mary for Business Insurance magazine. Anyone interested in reading this bio to get more of an inkling of this incredible woman and her work, click here.