Looking Inward: A Journey to Giving
Through committed partnerships with the City of Greensboro and community members, like Board Chair Mae Douglas, Cone Health is expanding access to health care with a new health hub and programs that show we’re listening and evolving.
On the corner of a desk, wrapped in a hard-bound cover of burgundy and gold, sits a journal. It belongs to our friend Mae Douglas. Greensboro native. Successful corporate leader, now retired. Passionate community servant and advocate.
Mae is one of Cone Health’s lead donors to the Healthy Communities campaign, an initiative to galvanize community members around a collaborative mission to transform health right here at home. Her recent million-dollar gift will support Cone Health’s vision for community-engaged programming, adjacent to the soon-to-be-established Windsor Chavis Nocho Community Complex.
Supported by voters in May 2022, the bond project will allow the City of Greensboro to renovate, and therefore reimagine, East Greensboro’s Chavis Library and Windsor Community Center as a comprehensive community gathering place that could change lives.
For Cone Health’s part, we are imagining the possibilities of a health hub, located within the empty space that becomes available when the current Chavis Library moves to the main complex. A space that is accessible and trusted, where we can provide the type of programming that may, in fact, save a life because of early detection. Where every person can find a path forward from any health-related challenge that threatens their well-being.
The possibilities here are nothing short of transformational.
But back to the journal. It has a role in how we got here.
“I’ve been on a journey about philanthropy and what it means,” Mae explains. “When I returned to Greensboro 10 years ago, I knew I had to create a different vision for my life because 37 years of it had been about climbing the corporate ladder. I had to figure out what I was going to do from that point forward.”
So she began putting her thoughts to paper.
On Feb. 13, 2012, she wrote a personal vision statement: “I will live a life of faith … a fulfilling, peaceful and victorious life surrounded by extravagant love.”
With that vision guiding her, Mae made a decision. “I love Greensboro,” she says. “I decided to commit my life to community service here. That’s when I really started to understand the notion of philanthropy and what philanthropy can do. I knew this would be my life’s work: to use my volunteerism, my service to nonprofits, my voice and my financial resources to address issues that I care about.”
As Mae began considering the impact she wanted to make, a wave of momentum began to build in Greensboro.
“I was serving on a number of boards, including the Cone Health Board of Trustees, and I started getting into conversations about health equity and what was going on in the Black community,” she explains.
She and her fellow board members studied Cone Health’s medical data. Statistics pointed to health disparities between members of predominantly Black neighborhoods and their white counterparts. COVID-19 brought into sharp focus the fact that Black community members experienced worse outcomes.
About that same time, voters across the county said “Yes” to the 2022 bond campaign, supporting a key investment in East Greensboro, an area that had not kept pace with the growth happening in other parts of the city.
“It excites me that investment is now coming to this area in a major way,” May says. “Especially as it has become more and more clear that there are health issues to address and needs to be met.”
Cone Health is on a similar journey, thinking about its own mission and how the health system could support the momentum around investment in East Greensboro. “We know from data that the residents in this area experience greater rates of hypertension, high blood pressure and diabetes,” says Michelle Schneider, VP & Chief Philanthropy Officer. “We have an opportunity to identify individuals in the community that lack access to care, and with Mae’s investment, we can listen to what the community’s needs are and continually develop programming to address those needs.”
For Mae, everything has converged to make this the time to make an impact as a community advocate and philanthropist. “I truly believe that if we can locate the health hub where the Chavis Library has been for many years, residents will access care more readily and more successfully. The building is a familiar, safe and comfortable place to go. It represents trust.”
