On September 29, 2016, the Junior League of Phoenix Community Leadership and Outreach (CLO) Committee will be hosting a small-group, members-only speaker meeting featuring Lois Savage, President of the Lodestar Foundation. This will be the first event in an eight part series of “fireside chats” where established community leaders are invited to share their wisdom and experiences with JLP members that are (or are interested in becoming) up and coming community leaders. The CLO speaker series has been generously funded by the Junior League of Phoenix Foundation to increase available training opportunities for JLP members.

About Lois

After having spent many years as an attorney (first as a Special Assistant Attorney General and then as a real estate attorney with Snell and Wilmer, Sunbelt Holdings and DMB), Lois embarked on a second career in philanthropy and has served as president of The Lodestar Foundation since its inception in 1999. In addition to her Lodestar duties, Lois served as executive director of Social Venture Partners Arizona (a venture philanthropy organization initiated by Lodestar) during the first eighteen months of its existence.

To Lois, the move to professional philanthropy was a logical next step from the world of community volunteering. Among the boards and commissions on which she has served over the years are the City of Phoenix Planning Commission, Heard Museum, VSUW Foundation, Arizona Grantmakers Forum, Junior League of Phoenix, Valley Leadership, Audubon Arizona, Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix, KAET Advisory Board, Ballet Arizona and Act One.

Lois was born and raised in Massachusetts, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Vassar and Simmons Colleges, respectively, and graduated with honors from Boston University Law School. Lois and her attorney husband, Steve, have been Phoenix residents since 1973. They consider their finest achievements to be their three grown children and their five grandchildren.

The Lodestar Foundation was created to put into practice a set of five interrelated sequential principles:

1. The basic goal of all humans is inner happiness.
2. Happiness can only be found by identifying and striving to achieve a meaningful purpose for one’s existence.
3. One meaningful purpose is to endeavor to help one’s fellow man.
4. Although there are countless ways to help, ultimately the ability to help is limited by one’s time, money and other resources.
5. By identifying and adopting a mission that is not focused on any specific field of interest and focusing instead on leveraging resources (that is, providing the most help with the most effective and efficient use of resources) and applying those resources to processes that affect the entire social sector, those resources can maximize the impact of helping others and thereby magnify the opportunity to achieve happiness.

For more information about the CLO Fireside Chat series, please contact CLO at jlp.clo@jlp.org or (602) 234-3388 x228.