We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

Just who’s writing, thinking and talking about the encore movement?

Encore.org set out to find out – with this new feature, designed to showcase some of the behind-the-scenes players who don’t often get time in the spotlight.

We’re experimenting and welcome your thoughts: What questions are we missing? Do you want to have a turn responding to the Encore 15Qs? Better still, is there someone you’d nominate as a possible subject? Please send us your suggestions.

Stacey Easterling served as an Encore Innovation Fellow in our New York office, after her work as Program Executive in The Atlantic Philanthropies’ U.S. Aging Program drew to a close — and before joining the Missouri Foundation for Health in St. Louis, where as VP of Programs, she leads the design, development and delivery of the Foundation’s program activities.

1

You’re at a party; an interesting stranger asks about your work. How would you describe what do you do?

I work for a nonprofit organization that gives grant monies to organizations that want to help improve the health of people in the state of Missouri.

Why do you do it?2

My personal and professional mission is to support anyone who wants to make people and communities healthier, and stronger. 

3How does your work compare with what you imagined you’d “be” when you were 7 years old? When you were 17?

Pretty consistent—same path, different role. All my young life, I wanted to be a physician. My mother worked as a lab technician in a community health clinic. She would take us to work with her sometimes and I loved the activities going on there—interaction with patients, helping them to get well if they were sick and helping them to stay healthy (health maintenance). A physician’s role seemed to be the right fit. I was a pre-med student in college, but Organic Chemistry and Physics discouraged me and made me re-evaluate what I really wanted to do. What was most important to me was ensuring that not just one person had access to quality health care, but that EVERYONE had that access.  How to pursue this—Public Health. I have essentially worked somewhere in this field all of my career in health care settings and as a funder of programs to improve the health of people.  

4What was your first job?

Doing the breakfast shift at the local McDonald’s restaurant.  I had to be at work at 5:30. 

5Who or what inspires you?

Personally: My family, especially my three boys. I am fascinated by the young men they are becoming. Everything I do, I do with a lens of being my best for them. 

Professionally: The power of people in communities to address their own problems, if given the resources to do so. That is what philanthropy is supposed to do (in my opinion).

6What surprises you?

That we continue to struggle with issues of access to quality health care for all; that we continue to struggle as a nation with having an honest discussions about race and inequality in America.

7What three words (or phrases) do you imagine your close friends/family might use to describe you?

Warm, committed, humble. A manager of mine once described me by saying, “Still waters run deep.” I like that.

8How do you handle frustration, setbacks?

Acknowledge the setback as just that—a temporary state and a natural occurrence on my path.  Remind myself to stay focused on my North Star, my goal. 

9If you had or have a mentor, what was their biggest impact on you?

I have been lucky to have many mentors. I call them my Kitchen Cabinet. The ones who made the biggest impact in my professional career were former bosses Robert Eckardt of The Cleveland Foundation and Laura Robbins of Atlantic Philanthropies, both leaders in philanthropy (and champions of Encore.org). They taught me valuable lessons on being a thoughtful and strategic grant-maker that supports leaders to make our world better. We all saw the value of Marc Freedman’s vision and wanted to support it.

10What event has had the biggest impact on your life?

The birth of my three sons. Being their mother has been the greatest gift. I continue to learn more about myself through my relationship with them. It’s tough sometimes (OK, a lot of the time!) but I value the growth. Or I’m just a masochist . . . 

11What’s the best single piece of advice you’ve received?

“Don’t forget to take care of yourself. You have to, in order to have the energy to care for others.”

12What’s something that very few people know about you?

Besides that fact that I was on Romper Room as a child?

13What technology could you not live without?

I’m pretty addicted to my smartphone- I can read, work, talk with friends, take pictures, journal, tell time, listen to music . . . 

14You’re on an island (without wifi) and you can only bring three books, films/shows or works of music: What are they?

If I’m shipwrecked and have unlimited time, I’d bring books because I love to read: The Bible—haven’t read all the way through;  Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns (The Story of America’s Great Migration); The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant. These books bring me joy (and I’m realizing I love the history that they bring to the stories).

15How did you celebrate your most recent birthday?

I celebrated with good friends from grad school in D.C,—we ate Mexican food and margaritas. How cool is that?

Published: June 21, 2016

 

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