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Kathy LeMay    

Founder, President & CEO of Raising Change

Kathy LeMay has committed her life to global social change. She began at the age of 14 launching an anti-apartheid campaign in her small Massachusetts mill town. Several human rights campaigns later which resulted in a LOT of press in a conventional rural community, she recalls her mother’s nervous boss saying, “Will your daughter be appearing in the newspaper as a REGULAR thing?” Her mother’s reply: “With any luck, absolutely yes.”

Since then LeMay has traveled the United States and the world listening to, learning from, and raising money for those who’ve survived war, genocide, gender-based violence and climate-induced disasters. In the course of her work, LeMay has raised $175M, led international women’s human-rights organizations, become a sought-after public speaker, a published author, and served as a philanthropic adviser to some of the world’s most renowned philanthropists. It was while she was in these halls of power that she realized that she did not feel as though she had arrived. She felt lost and not found in philanthropy.

Now, after thirty years in global social change, LeMay is going back to roots, back to where it all began. She’s rediscovering what it means to teach someone to read, to feed families at soup kitchens, and to radically listen to each person’s life and experience, and to share her story. Today, LeMay is capturing people’s stories and words through photojournalism with the goal of hosting her first exhibit.

Speech Topics

Suffering Is Optional: Fundraising Effectively in Challenging Times

Authentic Philanthropy: It's About the Relationship, Not the Transaction

Going from Success to Significance

Years ago, a colleague of Kathy LeMay's said, "After a great and productive career, I thought: Is this it? I knew then I was ready to go from success to significance." What does it mean to live a significant life? How do you know if your life has a positive and powerful impact on the lives of those around you: family, friends, neighbors, and strangers? LeMay will share stories of people who have chosen lives of significance and how their lives have become more abundant and prosperous with deeper connections and less stress. Learn today how you can live a deeply significant life through heartfelt generosity.

Voice, Activism & Money: Women Creating the World We Know is Possible

There is lots of talk about what it will take to end poverty, cure illness, and create a fair world. What, though, will it take to make change that will last? Author Kathy LeMay will share stories of women throughout the United States and the world who have created a formula for success by combining their voices, activism, and money to create a better world. LeMay's unique style of speaking will help your audience discover how they can bring together their voice, skills, talents, and resources to create change across the world or in their own backyard.

Unleashing the Change Agent Within

These days the news is filled with stories and headlines about philanthropy: big names, big causes, big wallets. We read about Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and giants of industry giving away 50% of their wealth to charitable endeavors. Amid this, what is the role for the rest of us? Raising Change president and The Generosity Plan author Kathy LeMay will inspire your audience to unleash within themselves their unique skills and capacities to change the world. You don't need to be a millionaire to make a difference!

The Calm in the Storm

When a prominent pastor from North Carolina argued that gays and lesbians should be rounded up and put behind an electrified fence to die out, Kathy LeMay refused to be poisoned by his words and others like them. Called "the calm in the storm" of the fight for gay rights, she urges her audiences to dispel their anger - right as it may be - and instead focus on empowering themselves and other marginalized individuals. "It's not what people say to you but how you respond to them that defines who you are," she says. Heralding this hopeful and humanitarian message, she insists that the gay community has an obligation to promote all human rights - not simply gay rights - and ought to use its social and political leverage to do so.

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The Space Between Philanthropy & Humility

These days, philanthropy is all over the headlines: billionaires, celebrities, and folks from all walks of life are stepping up to tackle some of our most pressing social issues. It's an unprecedented global effort galvanizing people's time, treasure, and talents to change the course of human history. Indeed, philanthropy has become a part of our global lexicon and our evolving human consciousness. But what does it mean to have an emerging third sector whose success depends on its separation from the characteristics that propelled traditional forms of business - namely ego, personal pride, and traditional definitions of achievement? In this presentation, Kathy LeMay discusses how the elevation of humility, meaningful service, and profound commitment to the greater good can help philanthropy transform the globe.

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