Kerry Martin is a seasoned and savvy Harvard-trained strategist with three decades of experience crafting innovative solutions to a wide range of social, business and marketing challenges. She is intensely strategic, insanely organized and an inspired communicator with a sound educational foundation and unique interdisciplinary background.
Kerry is also CEO and Founder of Hope Xchange Timebank, and Founder of Give a Grape, a cause-marketing initiative in collaboration with the wine industry to raise awareness and funds for suicide prevention and other social causes, and a mental health and suicide prevention activist. She recently agreed to sit on the board of Compassionate Citizens Foundation, whose new focus is youth suicide prevention.
Prior to entering the nonprofit sector, Kerry was a cause-marketing strategist at Apical Marketing, consulting with heart-centered entrepreneurs to grow mind and market share by adopting a cause and increase revenue with what she coined "caring relevance." She also held senior marketing, business development and program management positions at three dot.com start-ups, was a Project Manager at an environmental economics consulting company and Director of Fundraising for a US Congressional Campaign.
Kerry volunteers because...
I volunteer simply because I care. No one should have to go through life thinking no one cares about them. But they do. The suicide statistics today, particularly for our youth and those in the LGBTQIA community, are simply staggering and absolutely heartbreaking.
Further, as someone who also mentors in our HOPE for Bipolars program, I know our programs work. We provide a bridge paved with love and light that transitions those struggling from hopeless to hopeful and helpless to helpful, as most I mentor now volunteer for us or want to become mentors.
But, I don't do this alone. I have built an amazing team of volunteers: kindred spirits who I am incredibly grateful and blessed to be supported by and I'm so proud to call part of our Hope Xchange family. So while I don't get paid, I don't care. Because I know, that because of our family, there are people out there who do feel cared for and who no longer feel hopeless. This is what matters most to me.