-: My name is Ana J. Almanzar
and I am the Director of Community Relations
at Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.
We are a philanthropic organization,
pretty healthy financially, thank God.
And we provide funding for nonprofits serving New Yorkers
across the state, specifically on issues of health
and addressing the social determinants of health.
I get to get paid for doing something that I actually love,
building relationships and building community.
Since I've graduated with my master's degree
a few years ago, that has been my job,
and my life mission is to work with individuals
and help and change the world one bit at a time.
And at the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation,
I get to do that, meeting nonprofits on a daily basis
to introduce who we are as a foundation
and also to learn from them
about the issues affecting the communities that they serve.
To then bring that information back to the foundation
to help shape who we are and what we do
in the future is very exciting.
My biggest responsibilities,
the first one is to stay informed of what is happening
both at the local, city, and county level
and also at the state level
and in a broader aspect, I guess at the federal level.
For example, during 2021,
when we had the vaccination drives
to understanding which communities were getting vaccinated
at a faster rate and who wasn't
and then bringing that information back into leadership
to stay informed and also to understand how
the sector changes, how the nonprofit sector changes
and to always stay tuned to what is happening
in our community I guess would be, would be the main one.
We're responsible for staying,
not only us staying informed
but also informing our community or in highlighting the work
of the nonprofits that we partner with.
For example, we do healthcare conversations
in formal webinars online.
This new year we're having three of them
one in September, one in November, one in October.
And the idea is to highlight the work
of our partners by introducing them
to our larger community and having them explain some
of the great work that they do on a daily basis.
I am responsible for studying our current grantees,
our current partners, and looking at their mission,
who they are internally and externally, what they do best,
and specifically the program that they're working with,
the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation,
and invite them to be part
of our panel during our webinar conversations.