On September 22, 2021, the Pension Boards recognized the Rev. Dr. Martha M. Cruz, who retires after more than 21 years of service as Communications and Church Relations Officer.
Pension Boards’ Board of Trustees, friends, and colleagues took a moment to say farewell to Martha during a retirement celebration held in her honor at the Pension Boards’ New York City office.
A Reflection by Rev. Dr. Rodney Franklin
I serve as a staff chaplain at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama with other chaplains and resident chaplains. I am the on-call chaplain, working 3:00-11:00 p.m., covering the Heart Lung Transplant Intensive Care Unit, Bone Marrow Transplant, and Generalist floors, and responding to any code blue medical emergencies that happen during my shift and to pager requests from patients and staff who need to see a chaplain.
When the hospital started receiving COVID patients, chaplains were not visiting patient rooms but communicating with them by telephone and video calls. An iPad would be rolled into the patient’s room for a call. When we were able to secure more personal protective equipment (PPE), we were allowed to visit patients in their rooms.
During the 2021 proxy season, members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), of which the Pension Boards is a founding member, filed 293 resolutions with nearly 200 publicly-traded companies on a range of issues.
Portions of this ICCR report, which highlights the recent majority vote of Delta Air Lines shareholders for a proposal to seek information on how Delta’s climate lobbying aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement, were taken from ICCR’s press release and blog, and is used with permission. Please visit www.iccr.org to learn more.
A Reflection by Minoti Dhanaraj
In one week, I will hit my three-year anniversary at the Pension Boards. Half that time was spent coming into the office five days a week and the other half has been fully remote. The unprecedented hardships that the pandemic has caused in our country and around the world have made me realize how fortunate I am to have a strong support system from my family and the PBUCC team.
By Summer Intern Poojan Zalora
Prior to applying to the Pension Boards internship, I had no knowledge of the organization. However, throughout the interview process, I quickly realized this was a place I wanted to be. They have been so welcoming and are always wanting to help me in any way possible.
Throughout the internship, I had the opportunity to work on multiple projects and my manager made sure I was exposed to different areas of work, like the Accounting team. It was really good to see how interconnected all the different teams were. The Pension Boards is the definition of collaboration. Everyone knows how important it is to collaborate with one another.