By Staff
RECAP: We recently announced that San Francisco Business Times included Landis in its Top 100 businesses in the Bay Area Corporate Philanthropy list. Landis President Sean Dowdall and Founder David Landis recently discussed business’s role in fostering and supporting the communities in which our clients, community and family live.
In 2020, we celebrated Landis’s 30th anniversary by donating $300 to nonprofits that are part of our team’s communities and support causes close to their hearts. In 2022, we’re upping the donations to $320.
Below is part two of our list of nonprofits our team and we are proud to support:
Polly Winograd Ikonen – Senior Counselor
Choral music has been a central part of my life for nearly five decades. So naturally, I selected my current musical home, Pacific Edge Voices, for Landis Communications’ 32nd anniversary giving campaign. I’ve been a member of this Grammy-nominated ensemble since 2005. What I love about them is the vast variety of music that we perform (and perform well, if I may say so!). That stylistic versatility (Baroque! Contemporary classical! A cappella jazz & pop!) – combined with a profoundly loving community – is what keeps me attached to and inspired by this Bay Area institution. Thank you, Landis Communications, for supporting my passion as well as my professional life!
Andy Lowe – Senior Account Executive
The past few years have seen me spending more and more time outdoors – and it’s a privilege to have grown up fishing, hiking and taking in all the scenery Washington State provides. Seeking community and wanting to learn more about wildlife restoration and protecting waterways in my state, I became a lifetime member of the Washington Council of Trout Unlimited.
Trout Unlimited is a national conservation nonprofit comprised of many local chapters of people that not only love to fly fish but love to protect the rivers and watersheds that support those fish.
To celebrate Landis’ 32 anniversary, I chose to donate my $320 to the Golden Gate Trout Unlimited chapter to ensure my coworkers, clients and friends in the Bay Area will have clean, healthy water to visit.
Anthony Baldini – Technology PR Specialist
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention saves lives. Founded in 1987, the voluntary health organization has created a nationwide community empowered by research, education and advocacy. AFSP creates a culture that’s smart about mental health by engaging in the following core strategies:
- Funding scientific research
- Educating the public about mental health and suicide prevention
- Advocating for public policies in mental health and suicide prevention
- Supporting survivors of suicide loss and those affected by suicide
I chose to donate to AFSP because of the lasting effects its program can have on those who are experiencing suicidal thoughts. Suicide is sudden yet methodical and sequential. It can be months and years in the making, lying dormant as a patient predator, and it is at this juncture that programs like AFSP can make an impression that turns it away. Suicide is a selfish entity that has stolen from many but can be stopped. I support organizations that look to fight it off through research and awareness because it is this effort that saves.
Makenzi Jordan Rodriguez – Communications Specialist
I learned at too young an age that life is short. I was fourteen years old in 2007, the same year I lost a good friend to leukemia. During this age of metamorphosis, I wasn’t prepared to handle this heavy loss while learning to navigate the happy-go-lightly summer I was meant to have before my first year of high school. He was an integral part of my childhood, and I felt that I was leaving him behind. Although it has been 15 years, I am still affected by his death today, and it’s important to me that he isn’t forgotten. He fought an arduous battle and reminded me of the beautiful fragility that is life simultaneously. It was through his sickness that I learned about bone marrow transplants. “I would love to be a donor someday,” I told myself for fifteen years. I never wanted him, or another child with a blood disease, to suffer again.
This is why I chose UCSF Medical Center – Be The Match, an organization committed to helping patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases live longer and healthier lives through medical discovery. My intimate connection to UCSF makes this much more meaningful. Be The Match, previously known as The Marrow Foundation, was created in 1991, the same year my friend was born. This one’s for you, Justin!
Tune in next week for part three.