Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. Mary Marks, and I'm the president and CEO of the Pace Center for Girls. I've been with the organization for 13 years. And we're statewide organization that was founded in Jacksonville, Florida in 1985. We're working with about 3300 girls every year and over the course of our 35 year history have changed the life trajectory of more than 40,000 girls. That's a large number of girls whose lives are different as a result of Pace. As we started working in early to mid-February, recognizing that the impact of the pandemic was gonna force everyone to rethink how we were providing services to kids. So we really took a strong look at how we were providing both the wraparound social services to our girls as well as how we were providing the education platform. The most inspiring thing for me and that's really come out of working remotely is our girls. Is there amazing ability to overcome obstacles that would bring many of us to our knees and to really be able to go on and be successful to believe in themselves and overcome these obstacles and go on to do great things? And I'm also very inspired by how quickly the amazing team members at Work at Pace were able to make this adjustment. They're so committed to the girls and to the girls success that they had to go through a lot of growth and change themselves. Mary Marks, president and CEO of the Pace Center for Girls and we find the great in every girl. You're listening to Voices That Inspire.