A Love Story: My Acceptance Speech at the 2016 Environmental Media Association Awards
This past week, I was honored by the Environmental Media Association and recognized with this year’s green parent award. The irony is not lost on me, as I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, recruited by Exxon and Enron out of business school and worked on an equity team that managed $20 billion in asset. The only thing that was green during those chapters of my life was the money that we had under management.
We moved to Colorado 16 years ago and quickly had four children. It wasn’t until our youngest was diagnosed with a life-threatening allergy that I began to pay attention to how our environment impacts our health.
Today, the statistics are dire: 1 in 2 American men are expected to get cancer in their lifetime and 1 in 3 women. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in U.S. children, according the to the Centers for Disease Control. In the U.S., 1 in 13 children has food allergies, 1 in 10 has asthma, 1 in 2 minority kids are expected to be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood, and the rates of autism continue to increase.
Our children have done nothing to deserve this, and the opportunity to fix this situation is huge. It is an invitation to all of us to lend our talents and skills, to leverage everything that we are to healing our families.
It was an honor to be recognized by EMA, but none of us can do this alone. Together, we can fix this. It gives us the chance to tell the greatest love story of all times—that of healing our loved ones. Please watch and share if you are so inspired.
