Marthea is the Director of Governance and External Relations at the American College of Cardiology. Every day she coordinates thousands of volunteers who, like Marthea, advocate the necessity for heart health.
Transcript
>> My name is Raphael Wilson. I am the Director of Governance and External Relations at the American College of Cardiology. And so that College is the preeminent cardiovascular organization, that its mission is to improve heart health. We have 39,000 members worldwide, and 2,000 of them volunteer, and I coordinate the volunteerism by our membership. You know, it's interesting, if you work with volunteers you have to be prepared to work on a volunteer schedule, which means you work nights and you work weekends because that's when volunteers work. But generally speaking working at nonprofits is really a wonderful place to work, so even though you are expected to put in the extra hours, people are very caring and very people focused and so there's a lot of flexibility to take off the time that you need to take off. What I do is I have to be very familiar with all the different areas of the American College of cardiology. Lots go on in terms of research, in terms of new medical therapies. So I have to be aware of what's going on and what's the next big thing, what's on the cover of the New York Times today. We have advocacy, you have to be aware of what's going on Capitol Hill and you have to stay current, you have to know what's going on, and then with that knowledge it's being ready for anything, so you have the set of tasks that you came to do and maybe that's you need to thank a whole lot of volunteers in a meaningful way. But really what you have to do is you have to welcome the guests that come in and show them where their membership dues and where their time is going, and give them the VIP tour and the VIP treatment because there's no small, you know, there's no small parts. So if they're a member they're a VIP member so you have to treat them that way.
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