It is a vivid memory from Monique Farrell Smith’s childhood.
“My dad, every month, would collect all the envelopes we’d received, from groups like the March of Dimes, and he’d put them down in front of me,” she said recently, a smile on her face as she shared the recollection. “He’d say ‘You have $150’ and it was my job to write the checks, to select which ones we’d support…to divide the money between them.
“That taught me, I didn’t realize it at the time, but with hindsight, I see…that showed me my parents had a line item in their budget to give back to to the community.”
No wonder, then, that Farrell Smith has spent her professional life in the field of non-profit agencies, pursuing opportunities to help those in society who may be less fortunate.
That lifelong commitment to non-profits has now led her to Mount Airy, where she just finished her first week as the executive director for United Fund of Surry.
Farrell Smith’s route to the United Fund wasn’t necessarily a traditional one, having started in the southern reaches of the Caribbean, including stops in Miami, Winston-Salem, and a six-month sojourn around the world.
She was born in Trinidad, part of the Trinidad and Tobago islands off the coast of Venezuela, often considered as the southernmost island in the Caribbean. She lived there until she was 7, when her family moved to Miami, where she remained until going off to Salem College in Winston-Salem.
It was in Miami, she said, where her dad tasked her with choosing the recipients of the family’s monthly giving efforts.
“I always chose the March of Dimes because a little dime would come with their letters,” she says with a laugh, recalling what struck the eye when she was a child. “Or those who would send mailing labels. That was cool stuff.”
She grew up in Miami, with a tight-knit family that still maintains close bonds. In addition to her parents, Mark and Judy Farrell, she also shared living space with her sister, Raquel.
“Family is very important to me,” she says. “I’m still very close to them.”
Close relationships seems to have played significant roles in her life even outside the family. While in high school, she filled out a card of interest from a small college in Winston-Salem, a school that turned out to be Salem College, and that school made a deep impression on her.
“Salem had a very hands-on, personal approach,” she said. “Someone came from Winston-Salem to meet with me.” That a small school would send someone 800 miles to meet with a prospective student spoke volumes to her, she said, and set a model she would follow the rest of her life.
“They built a relationship,” she said. “That ability to make relationships, to see something in someone, to build a meaningful relationship, is something I value today.”
Building relationships, and working in the realm of non-profits agencies, is what Farrell Smith has been doing ever since. Among her career stops are time spent working as membership services manager for the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, director of major gifts for the United Way of Forsyth County, senior director of engagement strategies for the United Way of Forsyth County, and executive director for Next Step Ministries, a domestic violence prevention and shelter agency in Kernersville.
Most recently, she served as executive director of the Piedmont Wind Symphony, a position that was eventually eliminated when the agency went on hiatus because of COVID-19.
Along the way, from July 2016 to January 2017, she took a six-month break from the work world to see some of the rest of the world.
“I love to travel,” she said, again hearkening to her childhood days in Trinidad. “Being a small island, we had to travel to do anything, go anywhere.”
For her six-month sabbatical, though, she took traveling to a whole new level. “I went from Spain to Bali. I tell people I followed the sun.”
Farrell Smith said the trip “Changed my life.” After a moment of reflection, she explained how.
“It was the first time in my life I wasn’t working…I had this time on my hands, to remember what it was that brought me joy. When we’re kids, we know what makes us happy, but as adults I think we forget. We get so busy with work, with everything we have to do, we forget what brings us joy.”
She said that trip brought back to her what brought her happiness — simple acts such as reading, visiting museums, spending time with people, learning about others.
It was after returning home she took the position at Next Step Ministries, then the Piedmont Wind Symphony, and now the United Fund of Surry, an agency she says is the perfect size — not to mention that it’s the hometown of her husband, Jason Smith. That, she said, gives her a chance to spend time with her in-laws, Pat and Robert Smith, a treat given that she’s now so far from her parents. “I love my in-laws,” she said.
Farrell Smith said she’s enjoyed the roles she’s played in other agencies, but sometimes the larger organizations are too far removed from the more hands-on, close-knit relationships she hopes to build in Surry County.
“I love working for an agency where I can see my ideas come to fruition and still resemble my ideas. Where you can really see the needle move in your community.”
She also has an affinity for small towns.
“I believe small towns are what’s going to change the world,” she said. “There’s more depth, more loyalty, empathy, in a small town.”
Those closer relationships in small towns lend themselves to making more meaningful connections for an agency such as the United Fund.
“Statistically, we all know someone who has been touched by poverty,” she said. In larger cities, those tend to just become numbers. But in smaller communities?
“You know the person you help. You see them in the grocery store. You know them.”
She also enjoys the flexibility which comes with operating a non-profit agency such as United Fund. Farrell Smith married her husband two years ago, and now tries to spend as much time as possible with her stepchildren, 9-year-old Caleb and 7-year-old Abigail.
“My step-kids are my world,” she said.
For now, Farrell Smith said her top priorities are getting to know everyone on the United Fund’s board as well as the member agencies it supports.
“Normally, I would ask the board members to each introduce me to three different people they think I should know,” she said. Now, with a world colored by the COVID-19 pandemic, things are different.
“How do we do that? Virtual introductions? I believe my job is to build meaningful relationships. It’s really difficult to do that by email, by Zoom.”
But, that’s what she’s working on doing — as well as learning more about Mount Airy and Surry County.
In the end, she said whether it’s in-person or virtual, she wants to find the best way to help the United Fund make the biggest impact in the community, helping those who are most in need.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
Be First to Comment