My Super MVP

Yesterday marked the annual Super Bowl ad fest. Often times the commercials between the game are better than the game itself. For some, who don’t care about the game, it’s watching the ads that make it worthwhile. The playing field this year ranged from internet companies like www.CareerBuilder.com and www.Godaddy.com to the biggee’s FEDEX, COCA COLA, and Budweiser, to name a few. My brother-in-law, Michael, an avid sports fan, was visiting this year with his family during the big game. Perhaps if it hadn’t been for kids, we would have been glued to the tube watching the “award winning” Super Bowl commercials in between watching Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts face Rex Grossman and the Chicago Bears. But while the game was being played and the commercials were running, we were trying to manage our own Super Bowl of getting kids bathed, fed and put to bed. During a quiet moment in the evening, Michael asked me about my Richest People in America project and the people on the list. He asked for my favorite…my MVP of the list. I told him I couldn’t just think of one. There were so many great inspirational stories. On the list, are countless great stories of people doing things with far with greater impact than most of the MVP’s in Super Bowl history. These are people who inspire and motivate others to change their lives and create positive outcomes for others. I had to go through the list in my mind. I couldn’t pick out just one so in the coming days, I’ll write not about MVP’s but MWP’s - people who Make the World more Positive).

Introducing Nancy Rivard of Airline Ambassadors:
Airline Ambassadors (AA) was formed by American Airlines flight attendant Nancy Rivard in 1996, Nancy runs AA out of her San Francisco home, while flying fulltime and helping to coordinate up to ten missions a month. On these missions, AA members hand deliver supplies to children in need and escort children who need medical care. Nancy helps give opportunities to ordinary people to deliver school supplies, newborn kits, wheelchairs, HIV medicine, and vitamins around the globe. AA encourages family trips as short as a three day visit to an orphanage for a family with young children to an advanced, longer trip to help create economic development for local communities.

When she was twenty-nine years old, Nancy was a supervisor for American Airlines flight attendants. She had a life to envy: free travel all over the world, status as a San Diego socialite, and a bright future climbing the corporate ladder at American Airlines. Her world was rocked when Nancy’s father died suddenly at age 54. It caused her to start thinking deeply about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. “I looked at what was ahead for me and realized I was driven but not advancing at American but by a desire for greater meaning and purpose”. Nancy then decided to return to her career as a flight attendant so she’d have more time to pursue her passion. She began traveling and began what she called a seven year search for meaning. She went to live with the Hopi Indians, the High Andres Indians, the people of Thailand and the Philippines and in Sri Lanka where she adopted a child. Every month for seven years she visited another country. After seven years, she gave away most of her possessions and moved to Hawaii. “I asked God how I could deeply affect humanity. I had seen children all over the world who all needed so much. They needed basic things like school supplies, medical supplies, clean water or a comfortable place to lay their head”. She realized that if other people had the same experiences she had, they would fall in love with the same children she had fallen in love with and then have a desire to help. “The joy of being able to meet that need is so much more than buying a new car or a new house. A life oriented around oneself does not ultimately bring happiness. A life oriented around others does.”

Among her future aspirations:
Create an infrastructure where hundreds of thousands of people could help others
Popularize a new trend in travel – “Travel to make a difference”
Take her project public through TV and other media
Open more trade schools like the one recently opened in Thailand
For information on Nancy, please visit www.airlineambassadors.org
Nancy is a true MWP.

Write and tell me about your MWP or MVP.