With any traveling, the company we keep on the journey is half the experience.
On this Sept. 19–22 Hope Experience to Haiti, Convoy of Hope assembled an eclectic bunch of businesspeople from coast to coast. It spanned Convoy Founder’s Circle member and Southern Californian Rich Hickman to Haitian-born pastor Rousseau Pierre, who lives in New Jersey and hadn’t returned to his homeland in 30 years.
Other Springfield businesspeople who have gone before me on a Hope Experience are Tom Rankin, Jami Peebles, Larry O’Reilly and Bryan Simpson.
Since our return, I’ve visited with Peebles of Central Trust & Investment Co., who traveled with Convoy to Ethiopia on a Hope Experience earlier this year. She described the trip as life changing. Perhaps not coincidentally, Peebles is being recognized this month by Trust & Estates Magazine as a 2013 Practitioner With Heart.
On these trips, travelers cover their airfare and Convoy handles lodging and meals. A small part of its big network, I appreciated seeing Convoy employ Haitians as drivers, cooks and translators for guests, as well as managers and cleaners of its guesthouse. We built relationships with these Convoy employees.
In such close quarters – bedrooms were shared and we usually drove five to a vehicle – we got to know each other’s likes, dislikes and quirks. We spent 52 hours on the ground together in Haiti, dozens of hours hustling through airports and in the air, and several hours shoulder-to-shoulder traversing the country in SUVs, at one point coming within 30 minutes of island-neighbor Dominican Republic.
I really got the sense this group would stay in touch for personal reasons, but I also heard talks about business as industries and contacts overlapped in their circles. Convoy is a glue that brought them together.
Here’s a snapshot of the businesspeople – and personalities – who journeyed together to Haiti.
• Rick Zorehkey is the special assistant to Convoy of Hope co-founder Dave Donaldson, a bulk of which is handling corporate relations and traveling 40 percent of the time. He built a real estate consultant business specializing in retail through The Zorehkey Group and Zorehkey & Associates, with clients such as Wetzel’s Pretzels. He still holds a California real estate license.
Notable: He’s a recovered drug addict and certified minister with Assemblies of God.
Quotable: “It’s important that when we deliver help, we’re bringing hope.”
• Rousseau Pierre Sr. is a pastor for Faith-Filled Ministries in Newark, N.J. Born in Haiti, he’s called to lead pastors into his homeland.
Notable: He prays to tears for the needy.
• Dr. Richard Niemeyer is a 40-year doctor specializing in family, sports and international health at Leola Family Health Center in Lancaster County, Pa. He received a medical degree from Jefferson University and a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins University. He co-founded and works with Youth Outreach International to provide medical care to such countries as Rwanda, Uganda, Haiti and Romania. Also, through Nieman Enterprises Inc., he sells Ferraris and Porsches.
Notable: He’s visited more than 50 of the world’s roughly 200 countries oftentimes to provide medical care.
Quotable: “We go as we’re called and asked.”
• Austin Elliott is a videographer/intern for Convoy of Hope. He’s studying at Missouri State University and graduating in May.
Notable: Like Jason Bourne, he’s from Nixa.
• Troy Austin is the chief collaborator at National Christian Foundation, focusing on the energy sector. He’s worked in real estate and financial law as partner in Farris Austin Mundheim and co-founder of Catalyst Asset Management, both in Fort Worth, Texas.
Notable: He’s well read and says he was highly influenced by Donaldson’s book, “Relentless.”
Quotable: “Convoy brings hope through logistics.”
• Rich Hickman is the founder, executive vice president and board member of Atlantic-Pacific Processing Systems in Orange County, Calif. He started his merchant/credit card processing company in his bedroom.
Notable: He’s an international businessman who buys parts of businesses when he sees potential, and he’s a second-degree black belt. He traveled on a Hope Experience to Haiti two years ago and often spoke about the slow but evident progress.
• Terri Hasdorff is the vice president of government relations for Convoy of Hope, working in Washington, D.C. She has worked in the White House, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Labor. She helped to create the first office of Faith Based & Community Initiatives in her home state of Alabama.
Notable: She met Convoy’s Donaldson while working in the trenches for the Faith Based & Community Initiative.
Quotable: On visiting Haiti before the January 2010 earthquake: “It was much more chaotic. There was a lot of tension, a lot of hostility. It is much more orderly now.”
Convoy has led about 130 vision trips with more than 1,000 people the last three years, and the next is scheduled for March to El Salvador.
Convoy is helping to reduce the size of this big world, in part, by breaking socioeconomic barriers. Peebles and I now both have connections with people who are not in our “class” in good-old Middle America.
Relationships are a great equalizer.
Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]
