00;00;01;12 - 00;00;22;01
Liz Kay
Hello and welcome to the Providence College podcast. I'm Liz Kay. If you've missed the inspiring address presented by Nathalie Silverstein, the keynote speaker at the PC, Women Like the Way Conference. This episode of the Providence College podcast will help Silverstein, a member of his class of 1991 and author of Simple Acts The Busy Families Guide to Giving Back.

00;00;22;14 - 00;00;31;06
Liz Kay
Discussed how her years at Providence College shaped her approach to gratitude, service and philanthropy, and how these values inform the way she lives and works. Let's listen.

00;00;31;14 - 00;00;53;18
Natalie Silverstein
I'm so grateful to Father Sicard and everyone in the alumni office for inviting me to be with you here today as we celebrate 50 years of women at Providence College. I'm delighted to have my husband Jonathan and our daughter Elena here with me today. Last year marked 30 years since I graduated from P.S., which is kind of hard for me to believe.

00;00;54;11 - 00;01;16;18
Natalie Silverstein
I still remember my parents dropping me off in front of MC Vinnie Hall moving my meager belongings into a room on the fourth floor where I met my roommate, who would become my lifelong best friend, Grace Flora The housing roommate assignment gods were really good to us that day. Gracie and I were kindred spirits, having had a very similar upbringing.

00;01;17;03 - 00;01;44;06
Natalie Silverstein
We were both the youngest child of immigrant parents, hers from Italy, mine from Ukraine. We connected through our shared experiences as first generation Americans in ways that most of our classmates would not have understood. Growing up in a home where English was not the primary language spoken. What it meant to be the first child to go away to college The unique push pull of staying connected to family and rooted in culture while being given the slack to roam.

00;01;45;01 - 00;02;18;01
Natalie Silverstein
We understood the tremendous financial sacrifices our families were going were making to be able to send us to see how hard we were both expected to work, both in our academics and in our work study jobs so that we would be able to stay at school and make our parents proud. We were driven to prove to our parents that sending us their precious youngest daughters out into the big, scary world to live among strangers, to learn subjects they could scarcely comprehend, was worth the tremendous perceived risk.

00;02;18;12 - 00;02;40;10
Natalie Silverstein
The leap of faith it took for them to do so. I'm forever grateful to my parents, especially my mother, that they took that leap. My home life was not the easiest. My father battled demons, and I was my mother's only ally in the home in allowing me to go away to school. She gave me permission to spread my wings and fly in a way that she never could in all of her 90 years.

00;02;40;28 - 00;03;15;03
Natalie Silverstein
I lost her just a few months ago. And receiving the invitation to speak to you today on this happy occasion when we contemplate the impact women have had at P.S. over the last half century has given me a unique opportunity to appreciate her legacy. And to consider what attending the college has meant to my life. I sat on the board of our children's independent school in New York City for many years, and our former head of school taught me a very important lesson about speeches and presentations make three points, not four, not two, and hold up three fingers.

00;03;15;13 - 00;03;49;01
Natalie Silverstein
That adds to the effect. To that ethos, I would add a few other rules tell relatable stories, try to be a little bit funny. Keep it short because people would like to move on to dessert but interestingly, the name of this event is also broken into threes right then, now, and next. PC women light the way So the three things I want to share with you today then how the gift of a Providence College education informed my values around gratitude service and philanthropy.

00;03;49;25 - 00;04;15;02
Natalie Silverstein
Now, how my values and my ability to connect with good people inform the way I live and the work I love to do. And next, why I feel that the only way forward for us as people and as women is to live our values, to be generous of spirit, and to be of service to others. As I mentioned in my introduction, the opportunity to attend PC was an immeasurable gift.

00;04;15;16 - 00;04;43;10
Natalie Silverstein
I had been a good student at Sacred Heart Academy, an all girls Catholic high school led by the Sisters of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where my greatest accomplishment was playing the most famous nun in musical theater history. Maria in The Sound of Music. Twice, I only applied to three colleges. I didn't receive any help in this endeavor from my parents World War Two ended their educations in elementary school, and they learned English as a second language after emigrating to the United States.

00;04;44;01 - 00;05;10;23
Natalie Silverstein
The sum total of my parents involvement in my college application process consisted of my mother providing a postage stamp for me to mail my applications. Imagine that students in the audience. I completed my application by hand and I sent them through the U.S. Postal Service in an envelope Having recently navigated the rocky waters of the college admissions process with our two older children.

00;05;11;03 - 00;05;39;15
Natalie Silverstein
This seems like something out of historical fiction. I'm sure you've all heard the mythology of the skinny envelope, a rejection and the fat envelope. An acceptance. Things that are hard to replicate on a computer portal. My thick envelope from PC included a financial aid package that listed out the academic scholarships I was being offered with guaranteed money. I have a vague recollection of that amount being about $5,000 as long as I remained on the Dean's List every semester for four years.

00;05;40;05 - 00;05;59;29
Natalie Silverstein
This scholarship was enough to bridge the gap between what my parents could afford to pay and the cost of a PC education at that time. My parents were nervous and perhaps a bit skeptical about why I needed to drive 2 hours to go to college when there were perfectly good schools in Southern Connecticut. But they let me go, and my life changed forever.

00;06;04;20 - 00;06;26;01
Natalie Silverstein
The Gospel of Luke tells us to whom much is given. Much will be required. That line was paraphrased by President John F Kennedy and also famously by my mother. Although she probably said it slightly differently. And in Ukrainian, I was reminded repeatedly that Providence College had given me something, a gift in the form of scholarship money so that I could attend college.

00;06;26;17 - 00;06;45;05
Natalie Silverstein
I needed to earn that indulgence to prove I was worthy of it and to show I was grateful for it. When I graduated and got my first real job, I had a clear memory of my mother saying that PC had taken care of me, and it was my responsibility to give back to the college consistently and generously. To the best of my ability.

00;06;45;25 - 00;07;10;21
Natalie Silverstein
Please understand, my parents were not deep pocketed philanthropists. My father was a carpenter. My mother cleaned offices. They worked long hours. They made ends meet. They were as generous as possible when the collection basket was passed at their Ukrainian Catholic parish and they supported Ukrainian charities, particularly those that assisted new immigrants. But they didn't attend fancy fundraisers or contribute to large endowments.

00;07;11;13 - 00;07;46;02
Natalie Silverstein
So the explicit encouragement I receive to give back to PC for all it had given me is noteworthy. I took that suggestion very much to heart. I checked with the alumni office recently just a few weeks ago, and I confirm that I've made a gift to Providence College every year since 1992. Now I'm sure the amounts I gave when I first started out were small, but as many any good development officer knows, big checks are great participation, consistency, cultivating a donor to give year after year and then perhaps to increase if their circumstances allow them to do so.

00;07;46;09 - 00;08;11;06
Natalie Silverstein
Is everything. That's the power of philanthropic giving every gift, no matter what size counts. Every dollar compounds. Collectively, you make a difference. And every dollar, every donor excuse me. Whether they gave a dollar or $1,000,000 should feel pride in having contributed to the greater good. To put a twist on the words of the Reverend Desmond Tutu, do you hear a little bit of good where you are?

00;08;11;12 - 00;08;39;24
Natalie Silverstein
It's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. Which brings me to my. Now, these are the values. This is the philosophy that I'm privileged to share through my work. Now, as a writer, speaker and consultant, engaging with kids, teens, families, educators, non-profits, corporate business leaders, anyone who wants to make the world a kinder, more just and equitable place after a career and hospital administration, managed care and consulting.

00;08;40;04 - 00;09;00;04
Natalie Silverstein
I left the corporate world to raise my children, to volunteer in my community and to hone my skills as a fundraiser for causes that I care about. When my kids were little, I was frustrated by the lack of opportunities that I found to volunteer as a family. In our community, we live in New York City, a place of tremendous wealth as well.

00;09;00;04 - 00;09;23;02
Natalie Silverstein
As abject poverty and deep need. I simply could not accept that no one would welcome us as volunteers. It became my mission to find organizations that would accept children as volunteers, and I quickly became the service lady in my community, sharing my hard earned knowledge and encouraging parents to prioritize service for their highly programed and very, very busy families.

00;09;23;26 - 00;09;46;26
Natalie Silverstein
Parents were clearly interested in volunteering with their kids. They simply didn't know where to begin. And frankly, I didn't want to take the time to figure it out. It quickly became clear to me that a practical, actionable resource guide for parents and other caregivers providing simple ways to incorporate service and acts of kindness into busy family lives was something that was needed and something that I could write.

00;09;48;05 - 00;10;18;27
Natalie Silverstein
I discovered my passion, my purpose, the thing I was meant to do fairly late in life based on my own lived experience and the things that gave me joy and gave my life meaning. My work allows me to share my collected wisdom and to inspire others to engage in this important work. I believe that the lesson lessons I learned from my parents, whether implicit or explicit, coupled with the values instilled in me by my education and the people that I met here, have informed the way I have tried to raise my children.

00;10;19;07 - 00;10;51;16
Natalie Silverstein
The work I do and my desire to be of service to others. Women in particular are the driving force behind much of the philanthropic and nonprofit work that is accomplished in the world. From my days on campus, working with female classmates to organized fundraisers to the board of programmers, to the mothers with whom I served on the Parents Association of our children's school, to the women I admire who saw a need in our community and got tired of waiting around for the government or corporations to help to roll up their sleeves and found a way to fill that need.

00;10;52;12 - 00;11;15;06
Natalie Silverstein
I have seen that women lead the way. Most people can see the suffering the inequity, and they might click their tongues and say, That's sad. Somebody should do something about that. But most of the time it's a woman probably a woman who has her hands full with children, eldercare, a full time job, inadequate child care, who looks around and says, This isn't right.

00;11;15;20 - 00;11;38;12
Natalie Silverstein
How can I help And she finds a way. I'll give you just two quick examples. Only two this time. My family and I are longtime volunteers with an organization called Project Cicero. Which was started by two new workers, Susan Robbins and Lorraine Greenbaum. They saw a need for books in public school classrooms, and they recognized that there was a vast source of books in the homes of well-off families around the city.

00;11;39;00 - 00;12;03;03
Natalie Silverstein
Project Cicero runs a massive book collection drive every spring since it was launched in 2001. Cicero has donated over 4 million books to over 1 million students. It also provides books for children living in homeless and domestic violence shelters and in foster care. It is both a literacy program and a reuse and recycle program. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of volunteering at the Project Cicero Book Drive.

00;12;03;14 - 00;12;37;10
Natalie Silverstein
The first time we gathered together since the pandemic shut us down, shut the event down two years ago. It's a massive and unbelievably impressive operation. Hundreds of volunteers, mostly women and teenagers, sit short thousands of random donated books into specific categories. And then other volunteers replenish the tables where the teachers are allowed to shop. Our hard working, underappreciated, underpaid public school teachers show up, dragging massive rolling suitcases They are each given a 45 minute time slot.

00;12;37;28 - 00;13;16;09
Natalie Silverstein
They fill those rolling bags until they can barely zip them up. They drag them out to waiting taxis, the bus or the subway If you can imagine that they are smiling. They are energized. And they are so, so grateful. Teachers say that the free book from Project Cicero is the first book owned by some of their children. The mostly female donor is volunteers and leadership of Project Cicero, not the Department of Education or wealthy corporations have ensured classroom libraries will be well-stocked with age appropriate books and that students will receive the most important gift the ability to hold a book of their own in their hands and to hopefully develop a lifelong love of reading.

00;13;17;07 - 00;13;43;07
Natalie Silverstein
My second example. I'm a founding member of an organization called Impact 100 NYC, a women's giving circle. 100 women donate $1,000, and collectively we make one transformative grant of $100,000 to a nonprofit doing work in the community. Impact 100 NYC was founded by two women, Mindy Wichita and Emily Addis, during the winter of 2019. We all know the rest of that story, don't we?

00;13;43;21 - 00;14;07;29
Natalie Silverstein
COVID hit in early spring, shutting down pretty much everything in New York. Not a great time to launch anything. And yet Mindy and Emily persevered. They didn't want to wait. As the saying goes, life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's learning how to dance in the rain. They knew that starting something that would harness the collective passion energy and brainpower of a group of 100 women would be good for all of us.

00;14;08;22 - 00;14;38;13
Natalie Silverstein
They moved our recruitment efforts online. They asked members to spread the word very quickly. Impact. One near New York City boasted 134 members, and we received over 100 grant applications, interviews, site visits, grant committee discussions, all held over resume. In May of last year, we made one transformational grant of $100,000 to the Fiber Children's Foundation. Incidentally, an organization founded and run by women which provides afterschool enrichment, summer camp and college prep assistance to underresourced teens.

00;14;38;27 - 00;15;02;00
Natalie Silverstein
This year, we're over 200 women strong, which means that we will give to transformational grants of $100,000 each. I'm reminded of the Helen Keller quote alone We can do so little. Together we can do so much. Which brings me to our next. How will women, especially the young women who are lucky enough to earn a degree from Providence College shape our world in the future?

00;15;02;09 - 00;15;29;24
Natalie Silverstein
And what can we, who are just a few steps ahead of them, offer to help light the path? One of my all time favorite quotes is we rise by lifting others That's it. That's the big idea. Everything I've shared today kind of boils down to this one terrific phrase, don't you think I'm a I'm if I'm lucky enough to have some resources, whatever those are time, energy, talents, experience, education, money.

00;15;30;07 - 00;15;53;01
Natalie Silverstein
Everyone benefits if I share them if you work with me and you're successful, then I'm successful. If one member of a team receives an award, everyone on the team feels like they've won. If I who was lucky enough to receive scholarship money so that I could get a college education, now have the resources to donate so that others might receive a scholarship to do the same, then we are creating a better future for everyone.

00;15;53;10 - 00;16;12;22
Natalie Silverstein
One person at a time. This is all especially relevant for women. We need each other. As we rise, we need to look around put our hand back and lift other women to join us. As I recently heard, the Christian author Jen Hatmaker say, If there aren't enough seats at the table, we need to scooch over and shove in additional chairs.

00;16;13;19 - 00;16;36;17
Natalie Silverstein
And some of those chairs must go to young women, teens and young adults who will lead us into our next chapter. After the success of my first book, I turn my attention to teenagers for, you guessed it, three reasons. My first book was a parenting resource guide about engaging in service and acts of kindness with young children. As soon as it was published, like the very same day, I had friends and strangers.

00;16;36;23 - 00;17;01;28
Natalie Silverstein
Even the rabbi in our temple suggest to me that I should write a similar book for teenagers. The funny thing about young children is that they grow into adolescence and teens, and keeping them engaged in volunteerism is even more important as they mature into kind, compassionate adults. Second, I believe that this generation of young people has the imagination, the technological savvy, the creativity, and the generosity of spirit to make a meaningful and lasting impact on the world.

00;17;02;11 - 00;17;29;17
Natalie Silverstein
They will lift us all as they rise. I'm a little tired of the suggestion that our youth are disinterested, scattered, entitled or lazy. The teenagers I've met have impressed me with their heart, their integrity, integrity, and their willingness to call out injustice when they see it. Third, I wanted to remind young people, many of whom are struggling to recover from two very difficult years, that you don't need to change the whole entire world to make a difference.

00;17;30;14 - 00;17;55;18
Natalie Silverstein
Service has a very broad definition, in my view, and there are many small yet intentional ways to incorporate service into very busy lives because contrary to popular belief, small and simple things matter. Every tiny action holding the door for the person behind us, saying thank you to someone who helps us picking up litter on the street, signing up for just one shift at the soup kitchen matters.

00;17;56;05 - 00;18;16;21
Natalie Silverstein
Lots of little bits of good do overwhelm the world. I believe that one of the only ways to feel fully present in our lives, to get out of our own heads, to feel more connected to our essential humanity is to turn our gaze outward, keep eyes, ears, hearts and minds open to the needs of others, and to be of service.

00;18;17;14 - 00;18;46;08
Natalie Silverstein
My mission is to help young people, especially young women, to identify the issues that they really care about, the things that spark the flame of their curiosity, and to use their time, talents, gifts, and skills to do something that matters. The spark of that flame was lit for me right here at Providence College as the mission statement of PC reads It's an institution of higher education and importantly, a community committed to academic excellence in pursuit of the truth.

00;18;46;08 - 00;19;07;28
Natalie Silverstein
Growth in virtue and service of God and my emphasis added neighbor, God and neighbor. I'm so honored to be back on campus today to share my spark with all of you. As we know, a candle's light is not diminished by lighting another candle. May we continue to be a light to rise by lifting others for the next 50 years?

00;19;07;28 - 00;19;08;14
Natalie Silverstein
And beyond.

00;19;09;04 - 00;19;25;27
Liz Kay
Thank you Thank you for listening to the Providence College podcast. Episodes are available in all of the usual places, as well as the college's YouTube channel and on your smart speaker. For producer Chris Judge, I'm Liz Kay. Until next time.