Women of the world – Part four

Welcome to the fourth and final post in celebration of International Women’s Day, which was on March 8. We asked women around Cook, worldwide, to share their individual stories about their careers, community involvement, and life adventures. We received so many responses that a team of writers was deployed to collect the stories and we had to divide them up into multiple blog posts. This is the fourth and last post in the series. Thank you for joining us along the way!

Today’s post includes stories about giving back to the community, facing personal challenges, and finding reward in motivating others.

Team Building – Brooke El Othmani
Filling community cupboards – Laura Marks
Giving back is in her nature – Caitlin Moll
A teacher at heart – Kim Rohlfing
Giving back to her home country – Rhedcy Schomacker
Standing together for equal rights – Annie Schreiber
Finding her dream family – Amanda McElroy
Up to the challenge – Sue Beith

Please let us know about your own career, travel, and volunteer highlights in the comment section below!

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Team building

By day, Brooke El Othmani is an administrative assistant in Quality Assurance at Cook Biotech. At night, she trades in Microsoft Office for a clipboard and a visor, the tools of the trade for a high school softball coach.

Brooke started her softball coaching career when she was only 19 years old, coaching a traveling team. It was a way for her to stay connected to the sport during the summer, after her college season had ended. Following graduation, she spent two years as the varsity head coach at Benton Central High School, followed by a year as a graduate assistant coach at Mercy College in New York. She then returned to Indiana and coached the junior varsity at Lafayette Jefferson High School for two years. In 2010, her dad was hired as the varsity head coach at Harrison High School in West Lafayette and Brooke became his assistant. When he retired in 2015, she took over as head coach, a position she still holds.

“Being able to help a group of young ladies work to achieve their dreams is truly special,” Brooke said. “If I can help bring some positivity, fun and support to these kids, then all the time is worth it. Seeing the girls learn to communicate, have a strong work ethic, be great teammates, treat everyone with respect, and become confident in who they are makes the long days more than worth it.

“My son was born in May 2015 when I was an assistant coach,” she continued. “He had his first birthday party with the team last year. He was on the field playing with them and they all had cupcakes while he had his smash cake. He loves being around the players and they love being around him. It definitely helps with the family feel.”

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Filling community cupboards

Nearly 20 years ago, Laura Marks, Aortic Intervention marketing manager, and a good friend had a big idea: they wanted to start a food pantry that provided wholesome food to low-income families and individuals in the Bloomington community. Recently out of college and a young mother herself, Laura was very interested in the idea of making sure that people in our community with food insecurity had access to

healthy food and nutrition education. And so, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard was created. While the two women started their non-profit from a garage, the effort quickly grew. Today, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard annually distributes more than 1 million pounds of food to families in the community, and they also offer programs in gardening, nutrition, cooking, and food preservation.

“I have a quote over my computer at work that says ‘You must be the change you want to see in the world’ and it inspires me every day. I give back because I want to help others, and for me, that starts right here in the community where I live.” Laura is still passionate about food and community and stays involved with Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard in a fundraising role.

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Giving back is in her nature

For Caitlin Moll, Cook Biotech Quality Assurance laboratory technician, her interest in biology has always extended well beyond the lab. Growing up in Florida instilled in her an early love of the beach and coastal wildlife. That’s why after seeing the devastation caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, she felt compelled to do something.

As a volunteer with Save Our Seabirds, Caitlin helped rescue and rehabilitate sick and injured birds, while also co-developing the organization’s Avian Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation Internship Program. She found it very rewarding to be able to release healthy birds back into the wild and to spend time with the birds that couldn’t be released.

In addition to her work at Save Our Seabirds, Caitlin also volunteered at Mote Marine Laboratory, where she taught the public about the local ecosystem on educational boat tours and nature hikes. Through this type of education, she hopes that she motivated others to make a difference as well. Caitlin has always believed that if you have the power or knowledge to help someone, it is your duty to do so.

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A teacher at heart

Kim Rohlfing, Cook Group administrative assistant, runs the Cook tutoring program and serves as a tutor at the Boys & Girls Club in a low-income neighborhood in Bloomington. This program matches Cook employees with grade school students for tutoring sessions twice a week. The goal is to improve the kids’ reading and study skills.

“Kids crave that one-on-one attention, that is huge for them,” said Kim, a former elementary school teacher. “Everybody is so busy these days, so the kids loved having one adult’s attention for a full hour (during tutoring). They were excited and they looked forward to it. They would sometimes leave us little notes behind, thanking us.”

From the initial group of 10 Cook tutors, nine returned for the second session, and the group was expanded to 30 volunteers.

“That so many of the first group of tutors were able and willing to come back for another session was really satisfying,” Kim said. “I think our tutors really wanted be a part of that and to make a difference. Giving back to the community is such a huge part of Cook’s culture.”

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Giving back to her home country

In 2012, Cook donated medical supplies to Haiti. It was an inspiration for Rhedcy Schomacker, who was born and raised in the Philippines and now works as an assembler in the bonding department. She is also a first responder at Park 48.

“It dawned on me that my native country could also benefit from similar donations,” she said.

Starting in 2013, Rhedcy, who has lived in the United States for over 13 years, has been able to collect and send four to eight large boxes of medical supplies to Reach International Healthcare Medical Ministry (RIHMM) in Davao City, Philippines.

She has benefitted from the generosity of Cook, her coworkers, and members of Bloomington’s Filipino community to not only gather supplies, but also cover shipping costs.

Rhedcy spent a week in the Philippines in 2015, training people in first aid as well as delivering supplies. “The moms and children were so grateful to be able to take the supplies home with them.”

In February 2016, two members of the RIHMM staff were able to visit Bloomington and tour the Cook facility.

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Standing together for equal rights

On January 21st of this year, hundreds of thousands of people came together in our nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington. Among them were Cook Biotech director of process engineering Annie Schreiber, her five-year-old daughter Evie, and three of her coworkers (Misty Tepool, Cara McCammon, and Chris Fecteau). As the mother of two daughters, Annie felt it was important to make her voice heard in support of equal rights and protections for women and other underserved populations.

Annie said it was empowering to be part of this historic march. She had never seen so many people in one place before, all gathered to send a peaceful but powerful message about the importance of equality.

As a woman in engineering, Annie is grateful to the women who came before her and fought for the rights she enjoys today. But she also knows that inequalities still exist. Annie sees it as her responsibility to continue advocating for an even better world for the next generation of women – and to teach her daughters an important lesson about standing up for what you believe in.

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Finding her dream family

Infertility can sometimes feel like a dirty little secret, making it difficult for those affected to receive much-needed support and information. Amanda McElroy, Peripheral Intervention product manager, would love to change that.
Married for nine years, she and her husband, Jimmie, always knew they wanted to have kids. Unfortunately, they discovered they had “unexplained infertility” issues. “We were both healthy, but just unable to conceive,” Amanda said.

After visiting doctors, Amanda underwent an investigative procedure, called a hysterosalpingography (HSG). Following the procedure, Amanda became pregnant. “For an unknown reason, there is an increased rate of conception one to three months after undergoing an HSG,” she explained. Tragically, she miscarried at 10 weeks.

The couple then went to an infertility specialist and underwent six rounds of intrauterine inseminations and one round of in vitro fertilization. “We tried for seven years to get pregnant, which is a very expensive process,” she said. Nothing worked.

So, they made the decision to adopt. Six weeks after submitting their application, they received a shocking phone call. A baby boy had been born in Southern Indiana, and they needed to pick him up the next day.

“We were in the process of building a house and had actually put our application on temporary hold,” she said. “We weren’t ready, but this was the opportunity we dreamed of.

They were both at work when they got the call. “We met after work, then went to Sam’s Club and Target to get enough supplies to get by for a few days.” After meeting with the birth mother, they drove home with 3-day-old Heston James McElroy.

He changed their lives immediately. “He has brightened our lives up, and puts a smile on our faces every day,” she said. “We now have our little family that we always dreamed of.”

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Up to the challenge

Sue Beith, Cook Medical customer service representative in Australia, was devastated when she lost her youngest daughter to epilepsy in 2008. Her coworkers and supervisor rallied around her in support to help her through the life-altering experience.

After a couple of months, Sue realized that she needed something to keep herself busy and help her move forward. She decided to start a fundraiser to support epilepsy research. She organized a team of nearly 70 people to either walk, run, or jog the Bridge to Brisbane. This event raised more than $15,000.

Still needing a focus after that bridge was crossed, Sue joined the Brisbane River Dragons, a club that races dragon boats. This began a love of paddling and competing at an international level. In 2011 the club master’s team won gold in Hong Kong World Club Crew Championships. Sue has also competed in Macau, Hong Kong, and Italy. Paddling has taken her to Tampa Bay, Florida, in the U.S. and to Szeged in Hungary, and Welland in Canada. This year she will travel to China. Sue said about her new passions, “I enjoy life now, and if someone hands me a challenge I will be up for it.”

Not only does Sue challenge herself to participate in many types of athletic events and fundraisers – she encourages everyone around her to get up and participate. She says, “It doesn’t matter if you are not the most athletic person, participation is the key. If you are out there doing something even small, it is so much better than being on the couch.”

Listing her many accomplishments in running, paddling, and weightlifting, Sue explains what she finds most rewarding about her pursuits. “I am 56 years young and I am feeling so much better now than when I was 40. I am up at 3:45 am most mornings before work, training on the Brisbane River in either a single craft or a six-man canoe. I find this is a great start to the working day.”

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Writers Jon Hancuff, Valda Hillery, Ashley E. Jones, Debbie O’Leary, Bill Stephenson, and Jana Wilson teamed up to collect, compile, and edit these stories. A special thank you to all the women who stepped forward with their stories or who let us know about a co-worker with an interesting story. #goteamcook