CreativeMornings: Alison Gerardot, how your creative life is half-controlled by you

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples,” Mother Teresa. 

Gerardot's great passion is helping people and organizations create bridges of connectivity and achieve goals to strengthen an entire community. She does this by working with nonprofits on their longevity through fundraising, assisting individuals and families in their own personal philanthropic journey and creating solutions for a more sustainable community. Alison Gerardot

Having worked in the nonprofit and public sector her entire career, she knows that no single approach is the right one for each individual or organization. Through employment in social service, arts administration, city government, and a community foundation, she has learned that each entity is different in the work it does to serve others. She believes that blanket solutions rarely solve fundamental issues that should be addressed through individual strategic and creative problem-solving. 

Her educational background includes a Certification in Fundraising Management from the Indiana University School of Philanthropy, a BA in English with a Communications concentration, and coursework completed toward a Master’s in Public Management from Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne (now Purdue Fort Wayne).

She currently serves on the board of Project Ballet, several nonprofit committees, and has facilitated and developed both strategic and fund development plans for several nonprofit organizations and a small parochial school.

Even so, throughout her CreativeMornings speech, she repeated the powerful phrase she has wrestled with throughout her career: “You are not what you do."