The Compass Awards
*** 2011 Honorees ***
Respect: Southwest Airlines
Hard Work: Mark Bauckman
Joy: Monica Matthieu
Learn and Grow: Chris Marvin
Trust: Nick Sansone
Innovation: Anne Marie Burgoyne
About the Compass Awards
The Mission Continues would not exist without the good will, assistance and dedication of an incredible group of supporters and organizations who have shared a similar vision of challenging our military men and women in service at home. In recognition of their unheralded commitment to our veterans and their support to the organization's growth, we were honored to present our inaugural Compass Awards at the 2011 Veterans Day Gala in St. Louis.
The six Compass Awards were presented in the following categories, each representative of a core value of The Mission Continues: Respect, Hard Work, Joy, Learn and Grow, Trust and Innovation. Read more about each of the honorees below, and view each of their individual award presentations from the 2011 Veterans Day Gala.
Respect: Southwest Airlines
Since joining as one of our very first corporate partners in 2007, Southwest Airlines has shown the utmost respect and confidence in The Mission Continues. They saw promise in our vision to fundamentally change the way our nation welcomes home veterans. Southwest Airlines also saw a way their core business -air travel across the country - could help a small non-profit out of St. Louis reach veterans across the nation. Southwest passes have allowed our team to travel to every corner of this country for service projects and to meet with Fellows.
Four years into this partnership, the Southwest Airlines team continues to believe in our vision and ambitious goals and their growing support is truly humbling. We are honored to have Southwest Airlines as the Official Airline of The Mission Continues.
Hard Work: Mark Bauckman
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After retiring from a 25-year career with the U.S. Navy, Mark Bauckman began volunteering with The Mission Continues and very quickly became an essential part of our core volunteer team. He has been a true pioneer for The Mission Continues in his home state of California. Through hard work and dedication alone, Mark has recruited 15 Mission Continues Fellows, executed 12 large-scale service projects - an average of one every other month - and has grown our network of committed Mission Continues supporters to well over 800 individuals in the San Diego area alone. Meanwhile, Mark balances a full-time job, life as a family man with his wife of over 20 years and his two teenage sons, and training for the many triathlons that he participates in regularly.
Joy: Monica Matthieu
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Monica believed in The Mission Continues at a time when very few people had ever heard of the organization. In the past three years, she has challenged our ideas, pushed us to look beyond our own capacities, and coached us in constructing tools to aid us in measuring our successes and shortcomings. As a result of her tireless work, a survey of our alumni through 2010 was published in the Center for Social Development, an accomplishment unheard of for a four-year old non-profit.
Monica has dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy towards our work not only because she believes in our mission, but because she truly believes in those we aim to serve. She is a true friend to the organization and we are all better by having her on our team.
Learn and Grow: Chris Marvin
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A former Army Captain who was severely wounded in 2004, Chris Marvin underwent 10 surgeries and labored through four years of recovery before being medically retired. In late 2007, Chris would go on to be accepted as the very first Mission Continues Fellow and would be asked to stay on as the National Director of the Fellowship Program in 2008. In this role, Chris was responsible for building much of the foundation and structure for the Fellowship Program that has benefited 200 Fellows today. His ability to learn and grow as a Fellow and then immediately transition those skills into a model that would benefit the Fellows that followed him in service is truly inspiring.
Chris went on to earn his MBA from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and now serves as the Director of the Mission Serve Initiative at the non-profit organization Be The Change.
Trust: Nick Sansone
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As the chair of the St. Louis Leadership Committee, Nick Sansone has not only played a critical role in allowing our team to achieve our goals, but his consistency and accountability has enabled us to surpass many of our lofty benchmarks. For the last two years, Nick has dedicated countless hours towards helping to produce a high quality and high impact Veterans Day Gala. He has been a tireless advocate of our work and has always been willing to take on the next challenge. Most importantly however, Nick has truly exemplified The Mission Continues' core value of trust in all that he has done.
Innovation: Anne Marie Burgoyne
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Since the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation's investment in The Mission Continues in 2009, Anne Marie Burgoyne has been a trusted adviser and true innovator around our work. Through the wisdom and experience that Anne Marie brings to our Board of Directors, the dedication she has shown in constantly exploring new ways to help our team grow, and the many ways she herself has become an advocate for our veterans, Anne Marie has truly gone above and beyond her call of duty.
At a time when The Mission Continues had awarded only 25 fellowships and had engaged just over 775 volunteers, Draper Richards Kaplan invested in organization's future. In many ways, Anne Marie was among the first to see our potential and has spent the past two years working tirelessly to see it realized.
