 |
| Im Ja P. Choi , Penn Asian Senior Services |
| Visit Penn Asian Senior Services' website |
| Contact Im Ja P. Choi |
Penn Asian Senior Services
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
Im Ja P. Choi at times felt helpless as her 85-year-old mother lay in a Philadelphia hospital bed recovering from three surgeries for stomach cancer. She watched in frustration as the nurses tried to communicate with her Korean mother in English. “They said, ‘roll over.’ She didn’t understand ‘roll over,’ so the nurses had to push her,” Choi recalls of that 2002 hospital stay.
Executive Director
Vital Aging Network
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
During his 35-year managerial career with 3M, Mark Skeie built a long history of service as an avid volunteer. When he left 3M in 2003, he knew he wanted to serve others. He remembered the regrets of his father, who lamented days before he died that he had wasted his older years.
To help himself better serve his community, Skeie enrolled in an eight-month leadership program at the Vital Aging Network, which at the time was a University of Minnesota program for people 50 and older interested in contributing to the common good.
 |
| Pauline Nagle Olsen , Malta House of Care |
| Visit Malta House of Care's website |
| Contact Pauline Nagle Olsen |
Malta House of Care
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
Over the years, physician Pauline Nagle Olsen felt called to volunteer on medical missions in South Korea. But after leaving her private practice in 2005, she wanted to help people closer to home, in Hartford, Conn.
Artistic Director
Ballet Ambassadors
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
By the late 1990s, Sondra Forsyth had been teaching ballet to affluent students for decades and worked at studios in two of Manhattan’s toniest neighborhoods. “I loved my students, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my true purpose in life was to share my passion for ballet with less fortunate young people,” she says.
Co-Founder and Executive Director
University Beyond Bars
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
In 2000, when the prison’s door clanked shut behind Carol Estes, she wondered what she had gotten herself into. Then the managing editor of YES! magazine, a progressive publication outside Seattle, Estes figured the visit to the Washington State Reformatory for a seminar about prison life could aid her research for an upcoming issue.
 |
| Wynona Ward , Have Justice – Will Travel |
| Visit Have Justice – Will Travel's website |
| Contact Wynona Ward |
Have Justice – Will Travel
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
Decades after her father physically and sexually abused her, Wynona Ward received a call from her sister with horrific news. Ward’s 7-year-old niece had been abused by Ward’s brother. He was charged with sexual assault.
“This has to stop,” Ward thought – not just for her family, but for women and children suffering everywhere.
 |
| Lorraine Decker , Financial Mentors of America Inc. |
| Watch a video of Lorraine Decker |
| Visit Financial Mentors of America Inc.'s website |
| Contact Lorraine Decker |
Financial Mentors of America Inc.
Purpose Prize Winner 2012
On Sept 11, 2001, Lorraine Decker and her husband, Ken, were ready to fly to the Middle East to teach financial, tax and estate planning workshops across the region. It was supposed to be a routine trip for them, both financial consultants who had brought their seminars to major companies all over the world.
But as the Deckers packed their bags in a hotel near the Newark, N.J., airport, the first of the planes hit the World Trade Center. They wouldn’t be going to the Middle East.
 |
| Thomas Cox , Maine Attorneys Saving Homes |
| Watch a video of Thomas Cox |
| Visit Maine Attorneys Saving Homes' website |
| Contact Thomas Cox |
Maine Attorneys Saving Homes
Purpose Prize Winner 2012
The timing couldn’t have been better when Thomas Cox walked into the offices of Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a Maine nonprofit where he had periodically volunteered during his long career as a private practice lawyer for banks that specialized in debt collection and foreclosures.
Pine Tree was just about to launch a new organization called Maine Attorneys Saving Homes, to provide legal assistance for low-income homeowners facing foreclosure in the state. And Cox couldn’t have been a better fit. He had literally written the book on the subject.
 |
| Judy Cockerton , Treehouse Foundation |
| Watch a video of Judy Cockerton |
| Visit Treehouse Foundation's website |
| Contact Judy Cockerton |
Treehouse Foundation
Purpose Prize Winner 2012
A news story about a 5-month-old boy living in foster care who’d been kidnapped right out of his crib – never to be found – shook Judy Cockerton.
She thought about all the other kids in foster care, the ones no one hears about until something awful happens.
Soon after, Cockerton called a family meeting with her husband, son and daughter, then 18 and 12 years old, and together they talked about how they could help. Within months, in 1999, they became a foster family to two sisters, ages 5 months and 17 months. Eventually they adopted the younger girl.
 |
| Susan Burton , A New Way of Life Reentry Project |
| Watch a video of Susan Burton |
| Visit A New Way of Life Reentry Project's website |
| Contact Susan Burton |
A New Way of Life Reentry Project
Purpose Prize Winner 2012
At 46 years old, Susan Burton didn’t have a lot going for her. It was 1997. She was fresh out of jail, and not for the first time. On her way out the prison guard said, “I’ll see you back in a little while.”
