August 23, 2021<\/p>\n
Who or what has most inspired you on your philanthropic journey?<\/strong><\/p>\n Vanessa Bechtel, President & CEO of Ventura County Community Foundation. I\u2019ve been involved with national and international causes for many years. My passion is animal welfare. However, I was unfamiliar with community effort. What is a community foundation? What can it do locally?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What was your first experience in giving to a cause?<\/strong><\/p>\n Both my parents were pediatricians and were always giving to causes. When I was eight years old, my mom donated to a global child sponsorship in my name. I corresponded with the young girl we sponsored.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you could grant one wish to your community, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n Never give up.<\/p>\n We have been facing many problems over the past five years. Political strife, fires, global warming and COVID-19. I see the weariness and compassion fatigue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is your greatest fear?<\/strong><\/p>\n Global warming and what it will cause.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What fills you with hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n Over 50 percent of human beings are good people. We can prevail; don\u2019t give up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How would you describe your current state of being?<\/strong><\/p>\n With so many difficult challenges over the past few years, how to make sense of what has happened and is happening. I went through the five stages of grief\u2014denial, anger, bargaining, depression and now acceptance. But I feel that acceptance of sad or dire situations is not the same as loss of hope, and I try to put my efforts into continuing to fight the good fight rather than fretting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Who do you most admire?<\/strong><\/p>\n Forty-fourth President Barack Obama, author Neal Stephenson and CEO Vanessa Bechtel! I\u2019d love to have dinner with all three of them at once.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" August 23, 2021 Who or what has most inspired you on your philanthropic journey? Vanessa Bechtel, President & CEO of Ventura County Community Foundation. I\u2019ve been involved with national and…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}