From the Editor and Publisher
Yes, I’m Talking to You: We Can All Do Our Part You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. — Jane Goodall
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As I write this, I’m recovering from my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. By the time you read this, you may have received one or both of your shots. All the chatter lately has been about whether we experienced any symptoms. At this time last year, everyone was buzzing about the COVID-19 test. Where did you find it? Was it painful? What was the result? Do you think it was accurate? Today we have many of the same kinds of questions about the vaccination. I’m curious to see what we will be talking about at this time in 2022. Will the chatter still be COVID-related? Or will we be fully recovered? If I go by the results of my family members, friends and peers who have had the vaccination, it will take maybe 24 hours to recover from the dull aches throughout my body. It’s the least I can do to play my part in ending the pandemic. I’ll be back to normal soon. I wonder when our economy will be able to say the same. During this pandemic, we’ve typically looked to Europe to gauge what will be happening here in the U.S. within the next three weeks. But at this point, we can’t do that anymore. Some parts of Europe are locked down again in a third wave of COVID-19 and its variants. Meanwhile, Florida is open for business and trying to handle unruly spring break crowds. Two different worlds. Like one friend of mine who had a headache after her first vaccination, and another who experienced an enlarged lymph node, and another who swears his vivid dreams were from the vaccination, all of our economies are responding to the pandemic in different ways. That means our recoveries will be varied as well. But we will get through this as individuals, states and nations. We will recover. Can our planet say the same thing? Our world is suffering from another kind of pandemic: apathy about sustainability. I remember as a
child watching a TV commercial about litter. A man dressed as a Native American canoes through a dirty waterway against a backdrop of a city skyline spewing industrial waste into the air. He emerges on a littered beach along a busy roadside, where someone in a moving car tosses out a bag of fast-food trash that lands at his feet. The camera pans in on his face and shows a single tear, and the narrator says, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” That commercial from nonprofit Keep America Beautiful made a big impression on me back then, and I wonder how many of you watched it and felt the same way. Today, instead of litter, we are challenged to find solutions to different kinds of social and environmental injustices: carbon emissions, poverty, hunger, inequality, depletion of land and natural resources. The United Nations has addressed these and others in its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In this issue, we hear from business leaders who are fully engaged in this battle. Our cover story on Page 14 is about Ken LaRoe, a Eustis native determined to change the world through a values-based bank. He is well known locally for his bold banking endeavors, and now he’s becoming recognized on the international stage, too. Our Up Close on Page 30 is about Sister Ann Kendrick, a nun who has won the hearts of Central Floridians for her decades-long dedication, along with three of her peers, to helping lift local farmworkers and others out of poverty. We share their stories and many others this month as we celebrate Earth Day on April 22. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I did. Have a great month!
Editor and Publisher
i4Biz.com | APRIL 2021
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