Board Member Spotlight: Meet Edgar Mtanous
The team at Project Legacy is honored to introduce a new board member in 2022, Edgar Mtanous. Deeply involved in the community, Edgar’s values and goals for young people and the wellbeing of others aligns seamlessly with our mission.
We recently sat down with Edgar to learn more about his background and passion.
PL: Can you tell us more about your background and your experience up to this point?
EM: "I am a Texas transplant who came to Rochester nearly 20 years ago as single full-time parent of three daughters who were pre-school age. I was reeling from a divorce and was trying to make sense of my youngest twin’s hydrocephalus diagnosis - I figured this community was a decent place to determine how I was going to raise these kids on my own (my grandmother and mother helped and sacrificed significantly) while being determined to become a Mayo Clinic employee so I could get medical insurance. After five months and over a dozen applications, I was offered a job as a Security Officer – I ecstatically accepted. After having a difficult time early on adjusting to the culture and the distance from my family; through mentors, I was able to further develop myself professionally, ultimately resulting in half a dozen promotions and my current role as a Principal Gifts Officer aka fundraiser."
PL: Can you share more about your passion and interest for racial justice, youth empowerment, and other work central to our mission here at Project Legacy?
EM: "When I was a teenager, I often rejected the importance of experience since I thought that it was reserved for adults and used as an exclusion measure, yet as I’ve matured I can recall how the void of wisdom and counsel early in my life led to errors in judgment and created a liability in me reaching my potential. I am extremely fortunate that through the past two decades I’ve had a select cohort of people believe in me well before I believed in myself. I often felt underwhelmed because it seemed as if society was satisfied with, even applauded my mediocrity. Yet these individual’s initial belief pushed me and reaffirmed that it was okay to be ambitious and strive to meet my potential. That was priceless gift and if I can have that impact on one of these kids who come from comparable backgrounds as mine, I now have the experience to know how much it can be of benefit."
PL: Tell us more about your decision to join Project Legacy’s board.
EM: "I’ve been volunteering on boards for about ten years now, and Project Legacy’s proximity to those its serves spoke to me. I attended a Circle Meeting at Karen’s suggestion and the quality of the youth resonated with me. I wished I could have shared that encounter with a lot of people because it was pretty invaluable. Their goals were so fundamental: faith-based, family-oriented and academically-centered. I knew immediately after exiting the meeting that this effort was meaningful and worthwhile."
PL: What about Project Legacy’s mission and approach stuck out to you most?
EM: "I am a father of three now young women who are all college aged….I was a teenage parent and I recall that my bar for parental achievement was raising those then toddlers to contribute to society and leave the world better than they found it. In essence, I feel that is PL’s order and it aligned with my code. We each try to achieve that through discovery of self-determination, identity and legacy building."
PL: What are your hopes for the organization and what do you hope to contribute to the mission now that you are on the board?
EM: "Firstly, continuous engagement. From my early conversations with fellow board members, it seems Project Legacy is refining itself after almost two full years of COVID-19. It’s exciting to think about how we relaunch our programming and solidify our operations going forward. Many non-profits like ours have been greatly hindered by the pandemic, nonetheless thanks to the resilience and determination of our staff and kids we’ve graduated a record number of youth this past year. I intend on contributing at a board level to ensure this continues and I hope to be able to interact with our young women and men as often as feasible."
PL: Thank you for your time and commitment. Before we close, do you have any words of encouragement or a message of action for our community or supporters?
EM: "I am blessed that I solicit funds on behalf of an institution that I can speak about in a testimonial fashion, I relate with our grateful patients and they generally relate with me – I feel the same connection with these kids. In my experience, charitable gifts are made as an investment in human capital or to create human derived impact. Through the sustained funding that results from donor generosity, I believe we at Project Legacy can do each concurrently and in short order."