Singing About the Unsung Heroes

When we hear the words “unsung heroes” we think about those special people who go about the business of saving lives and helping those in need with no thought for themselves. While many of these serve as first responders, medical personnel, and others on the front lines, there are also many sitting in the cube next to you, or in the office down the hall, or joining you on a computer screen during a virtual call.

Some of those unsung heroes work at FedEx. In the course of their daily work, they help save lives and serve others by applying their unique expertise to serve local, national and global relief agencies. Who are these people?

For decades, FedEx has supported local, national and global relief agencies, helping them save lives and comfort the afflicted. We do this because of our unique capacities. With more than 650 airplanes, and 180,000 vehicles on the world’s roads we are able to get lifesaving materials, medicines, and equipment to disaster sites with great speed and precision.

We also do this because we have 570,000 team members who care about the communities in the 220 countries and territories that we serve. Among those team members, there are certain highly-trained professionals who use their special expertise to help relief agencies carry out their humanitarian missions.

In addition to providing these agencies with financial support and complimentary transportation services, we also tap into the rich expertise of our team members to ensure aid reaches locations where it is desperately needed.

In recent months, responding to pandemic hot spots around the world, we’ve relied on team members in our operations to expertly accommodate the needs of the nonprofits we support. Their efforts go way beyond the call of their already demanding day-to-day work. Somehow, they make the time, unleashing their passion to serve others.

From helping organize a donated FedEx charter flight full of oxygen concentrators, personal protective equipment, medicines, and supplies from the U.S. to India; to helping a local fire department in the U.S. figure out how to most effectively get vaccines to the homebound, our unsung heroes truly deliver. Most recently, these team members have helped facilitate two donated charter flights full of aid to Haiti to assist with earthquake relief efforts.

While there are way too many to mention them in this post, these heroes include Glenn Carpenter who provides regular guidance on how best to move relief shipments from one city or country to another; Dave Lange, Angel Sepulveda, and Pardip Kumar who always eagerly jump in to help with a donated charter flight; Mike Scerbo, and Rodney Lewis at our Newark and Memphis hubs who help orchestrate all the moving parts involved in hub operations to manage large humanitarian shipments; Hillary Jones, who helps with special shipments; Elaine Cornelison; who oversees warehousing efforts; and Gigi Wolfe in engineering, who uses her expertise in pickup and delivery routing to help organizations determine the most effective way to deliver essential items from food to vaccines.