Month: September 2024

CHARLOTTE, N.C., September 30, 2024 /3BL/ – Truist Foundation today announced it will donate an additional $500,000 to support relief and recovery efforts in communities most impacted by the historic destruction from Hurricane Helene, including Western North Carolina, making its total contributions $1 million. The funds will be distributed to IT Disaster Resource Center, United Way Worldwide, the American Red Cross and Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s Atlantic Hurricane Season Recovery Fund.

“Many of the communities we serve are experiencing historic and catastrophic flooding and millions are still without power and access to everyday essentials,” said Lynette Bell, president of Truist Foundation. “Truist Foundation is supporting trusted partners who are on the ground in the hardest hit areas, tirelessly working to restore power, cell service and clear roadways. We are committed to putting our purpose into action with additional funds to help those in impacted communities get connected – digitally and physically – as soon as possible.”

In addition to technology and infrastructure support, including converting trucks and trailers into Wi-Fi hotspots and connectivity centers, the selected organizations will use their grant funds to identify and deliver the most critical immediate community needs such as access to food, shelter and medical services. A portion of the donation will be focused on medium- and long-term recovery informed by disaster experts in partnership with those in the affected communities.

Last week, Truist Foundation announced an initial $500,000 grant to help prepare, respond and recover in communities impacted by Helene as quickly as possible. These funds – along with Truist Foundation’s $1 million grant made earlier this year to the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program – helped the American Red Cross establish 10 disaster relief operations across 10 states, provide 1,400 disaster workers, support 70 shelters, and deploy 45 emergency response vehicles – with about two dozen more enroute. Funds also helped provide food, shelter, emotional support, comfort kits and other immediate relief supplies to thousands of families and individuals impacted by Helene.

About Truist Foundation 
Truist Foundation is committed to Truist Financial Corporation’s (NYSE: TFC) purpose to inspire and build better lives and communities. The foundation, an endowed private foundation established in 2020 whose operating budget is independent of Truist Financial Corporation, makes strategic investments in a wide variety of nonprofit organizations centered around two focus areas: building career pathways to economic mobility and strengthening small businesses to ensure all communities have an equal opportunity to thrive. Embodying these focus areas are the foundation’s leading initiatives — the Inspire Awards and Where It Starts. Learn more at Truist.com/Foundation.

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Media Contact: 
Kristen Fraser 
media@truist.com

Verizon

Terry Beltrán meets with Ask the Latina app user Melissa Enciso in the Mexicantown neighborhood of Detroit.

When Terry Beltrán was a student at Michigan State University, she remembers being the only Latina in her industrial engineering program. In difficult moments, she felt she could have benefited from more support. “I always look back and think, had I had a role model that looked like me, it would have made a difference,” Beltrán says.

Today, Beltrán, who lives in the greater Detroit area, is an entrepreneur with decades of success under her belt. In addition to holding marketing roles at several major Fortune 500 companies, she also launched two businesses as a solopreneur. Vista Latinos helps brands target Hispanic audiences; Beltrán Media provides marketing expertise to Hispanic-owned small businesses.

To help the next generation, Beltrán decided to create a mentorship app called Ask the Latina, which connects Latina professionals to Latina students hoping to start careers in STEM and finance. As Beltrán points out, Latinas are underrepresented in those fields. “I felt like that needed to change,” she says. And although Beltrán runs two thriving media and marketing companies, she turned to Verizon Small Business Digital Ready to gain valuable skills she needed to create the app.

The most impactful aspect of the Verizon Small Business Digital Ready program, Beltrán says, was that it connected her to an “awesome” engineering mentor, who helped her figure out how to price the app and sort through proposals from developers. “[My] mentor was already part of building apps as an engineer—it was like a perfect match,” she explains. Beltrán was early in the app process, working on wireframes, which are like blueprints for an app. By working with her mentor, Beltrán was able to bring the app to reality—called minimal viable product in the field—and reduce the development costs by 25%, she says.

A one-on-one session with a Verizon Small Business Digital Ready finance expert also helped Beltrán realize that launching the Ask the Latina app would necessarily be different from her other ventures. Her businesses are service-oriented, and after the finance session, Beltrán realized, “This was a totally different area … I’m going in and developing a product this time, not a service.” A financial structures course helped her create a new business model for the app.

Through additional self-paced and live courses, Beltrán learned to hone her social media strategy, including using social media to target mentors and younger mentees. She says she increased followers on one social media site by 50%, hired a social media content creator, and redesigned her website to include Ask the Latina under her umbrella brand.

Indeed, Beltrán found that even with her experience and record of success, Verizon Small Business Digital Ready offered new learnings – and ones she was able to apply to all three of her current ventures. “I think that the nice thing about Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, is it’s actually great for anybody in any stage of their career, any stage of their business, whether they’re startup or further down the line,” Beltrán says, “because I find that there’s something in there for no matter what stage you’re in.”

Verizon Small Business Digital Ready is part of Verizon’s goal to support 1 million small businesses by 2030 with the resources to thrive in the digital economy. Visit CitizenVerizon.com to learn more about the company’s responsible business efforts. To sign up for Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, visit digitalready.verizonwireless.com. An individual user’s experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.