Creating a Social Enterprise
Our guest speaker today was Merry Korn, President/CEO of Pearl Interactive (website is pinsourcing.com). Merry spoke about her personal journey with Pearl as an example of how to cultivate a Social Enterprise, i.e., a for-profit business that serves a social mission. At Pearl, they have focused on hiring disabled individuals, including disabled veterans, retired veterans, military spouses and other disenfranchised workers. She told some amazing stories of how they have enabled their workers to change their lives using technologies that allow remote contact center work. In addition to the good that they do through hiring the workers that they do, Pearl also has honed its mission to a social mission - remote health monitoring of those with chronic health issues.
Because of the attraction of both Enterprise and Government entities to Pearl's mission to hire disenfranchised workers, it is aiding them in growing the business profitably. Federal Government contracts have increased in particular because of the veterans they employ.
Announcements
- Strides for Sobriety 5K run is this Sunday. There is still an opportunity to participate - or to donate. Visit Columbus Running for more details or reach out to Jack Curtis.
- Sharon Kendall announced that we are participating with 7 local area Rotary clubs in a New Generations Service Exchange in June. Our club is expected to host the Taiwanese exchange students during the firs half of June. Reach out to Sharon if you are interested in being a host family. Also, June 27th will be an outing to a Columbus Clippers game which is an opportunity to interact with the students.
- Dwight announced that the final Blarney Bash numbers are being tallied, and we expect to earn between $5K-$15K for our Foundation, plus we raised $7.500 for Syntero and Strides for Sobriety.