Steve Larosiliere

When I was younger, my Haitian born mother told me to always be friends with Jewish people. “They’re good people!” she would say. Weird statement. Well you see as an immigrant woman coming to the United States in the 1960s, I can only gather that since she was judged for being different that it became only natural for her to view people by their race or ethnicity. This was reinforced throughout the years as she worked under a number of Jewish people. 

So little did I know that in 2004 when I was on the Ocean Beach section of Fire island dreaming of starting a snowboard mentoring program that I would not only be close to a Jewish person but I would also get a second mother figure. One morning, I was heading to the beach to watch the sunrise and I saw this woman sitting in the same bench that I’d been sitting at. Little did I know that it was her spot for over 40 years! After trading pleasantries, she asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was starting a snowboarding non profit. She got excited and told me she was on the board of a non profit in Boston. She then walked me to her house to give me a non profit book. Mind you, all I had was an idea for a non profit. I had no money, no donors, no organization. Nothing. 

Come to find out, Meg had children that were my age, she was divorced, and she was a former wall street executive. Originally from the Bronx, she is a hard core, no nonsense New Yorker who has a heart of gold. She later introduced me to a non profit consultant who mentored me on how to form Stoked and walked me through fundraising all the way to launching the program. She would also set up coffee dates with non profit executives for me in addition to giving me loads of advice. Meg eventually became one of Stoked’s largest supporters, volunteers, and a few years ago we honored her with the Stoked Appreciation award. She is one of my biggest supporters.  

In addition to being one of the only people to be absolutely real with me, she is an amazing listener, objective advice giver, and a generous human. She also has high expectations and is demanding. Her demands overall have made drastic improvements to our organization and she’s always looking out for our best interests. There were a few times in the past 7 years where she threatened to leave Stoked if I didn’t get health insurance or we didn’t hire our own additional life guards at the ocean for the surf program. 

Every now and then, I’ll complain that I don’t have enough mentors around then I realize they often don’t come in the form of what you perceive as the stereotypical mentor. Sometimes they’re a short, cute Jewish mother from the Bronx.