A Q&A with Chief Financial Officer Martha Ferry

Those who know her only by her cheerfully pragmatic presentations at Annual Conference or Winter Leadership, might be surprised to learn that AJLI Chief Financial Officer Martha Ferry is an intrepid traveler to some of the world’s more remote locales (the state seals of Burma, Botswana, Libya, and Laos, and many others can be found among the stamps in her passport), an able and adventurous amateur chef who once studied at La Varenne in Paris, and a devotee of alternative theater on New York’s vibrant Off-Broadway scene.
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AJLI Joins Vision 2020 Gender Equality Initiative

In February, AJLI joined the Vision 2020 Gender Equality Initiative, a project of the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership® at Drexel University’s College of Medicine, which was conceived to stimulate dialogue about women and leadership in advance of the 100th anniversary, in 2020, of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
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Childhood Obesity: Lessons from Mexico

As Americans, we tend to focus on “our own problems.” Fair enough. But many of the problems we struggle with – as individuals, as parents and as a country – are shared by other countries. Take Mexico, for example. Rising affluence, the proliferation of fast food and more working parents have lead to a rise in childhood obesity there as well. And maybe there’s something there for all of us to learn.

One big lesson? The cure starts at home.

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What Happens When You’re Too Old for Santa Claus…and Foster Care?

There are approximately 500,000 young Americans in foster care around the country, according to the most recent federal AFCARS data. While most returned to their birth families, went to live with other family members or were adopted, the 14% who age out or otherwise drop out of foster care may find that the biggest challenge in leaving the system is survival.

“Statistics prove that the physical, emotional and social outcomes for ‘aged-out’ foster kids is often bad—bad for the kids and bad for the community that often has no way of dealing with them,” said Debbie Robinson, President of The Association of Junior Leagues International, which represents 292 individual Junior Leagues in four countries. “For all of the money, time and effort we devote to keeping kids in foster care, unfortunately they are too often left on their own when they ‘graduate.’”

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