Board Members and Young Professionals gather during annual Mix & Mingle Event

Bright Promises Young Professionals Board & Board of Directors get to know each other during annual Mix & Mingle Event
By guest author and volunteer Jackson Barry

This Spring, Bright Promises’ Young Professionals Board and our Board of Directors met for a few drinks, finger sandwiches and a chance to get to know each other and the foundation better. A special thank you goes out to Marilyn Eisenberg for opening her gorgeous home (and deck!) for the event. 

The weather was fabulous and it truly was a special opportunity to enjoy some good company and learn about the new and exciting vision for Bright Promises Foundation as we approach our 150th anniversary.

Bright Promises Director of Development Katherine Dreher kicked off the night with a fun icebreaker game of popcorn introductions. As each new guest arrived, they were handed a nametag with someone else's name on it. Then they were instructed to find that person, introduce themselves, and learn one interesting fact about them. 

Young professionals and board members alike buzzed through the room, eagerly making introductions as they looked for the face to match the name they were given.

Eventually, members of both Boards gathered together on the deck for the final round where members introduced one another using the interesting fact they just discovered, and boy, was this game juicy! It was revealed that Katherine started out her career as a character actress in high school hosting children’s birthday parties! 

Or how about this, did you know that Bright Promises Senior Program Officer Lauren Krieg is an All-American badminton player? That’s right, at one point she was even ranked #1 in Costa Rica!

After everyone was introduced, Executive Director Iris Krieg got a chance to talk about some of the exciting things happening at Bright Promises, including the final year of the Promoting Resilience initiative focusing on bringing trauma-informed training to anyone and everyone who works with children. 

This is really exciting, because as Iris astutely pointed out, people aren’t aware of just how damaging this issue is yet.

“We say we’re working on trauma and people say ‘What?’ But that’s because we’re looking for things other people aren’t aware of yet... Bright Promises is really moving the needle forward for how the world views trauma.” - Iris Krieg, Executive Director

Next, Iris announced that Bright Promsies 3-Year Strategic Plan is moving forward. The plan is set to carry Bright Promises through to the 150th anniversary in 2019. Among other things, the plan emphasizes an effort to expand the network of young professionals that Bright Promises works with.

Lastly, honorees for the 2017 Awards were announced before a cold wind struck causing everyone to duck inside for shelter and one final game of Bright Promises Trivia. Inside,  members had fun competitively learning interesting facts about who exactly Bright Promises serves and how. 

Interesting facts the Board members discovered during this games include  that 97% of children served by Bright Promises live below the poverty line and are at significantly increased risk of long-term deficits including school failure, homelessness, incarceration and early death; and that Bright Promises has partnered with over 250 organizations over the last 10 years.

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A big thank you goes out to everyone who came and helped make the night a success. What a fun way to get to know each other better and learn about all the good that Bright Promises is doing for our city! 

To close, here are some beautiful things that members of the Board of Directors and Young Professionals Board had to say about Bright Promises:

“I like how Bright Promises has a focus on getting kids involved in sports and how they focus on things like trauma, issues that are more recently recognized. We’re working on the community level, instead of just donating and never seeing the final product”

-Katherine Lissy, Young Professionals Board Secretary

“Bright Promises is special to me because it helps kids by making systemic change and by being consistently innovative.”

-Sendhil Revuluri, Board Director

“Bright Promises is meaningful because we’re selective, we focus on social and emotional learning. No one else is talking about that, it’s like we get to be ambassadors for a cause no one else is talking about.”

-Amanda Farag, Young Professionals Board President