Volunteering: It’s All in the Family
Jeff Armstrong has spent his 19-year professional life with the same company that gave his father his first job, Molson, where Jeff now holds the position of Director of Sales Training in Toronto. Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Jeff has moved with Molson to Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, back to Regina and now Toronto in progressively senior Sales / Sales Management roles. What Jeff enjoys the most about the last four years in his training role is helping motivate others to achieve their goals.
Despite having left Regina for some time now, Jeff has never lost sight of what’s important to him, he has remained committed to finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), relying on Molson’s matching gifts program to boost his annual contributions. “On top of the matching gift donations they’ve made,” explains Armstrong, “Molson has also made one-time donations like the $20,000 they gave to a Saskatchewan treatment centre – a province that has the highest diagnosis rate of MS in Canada.”
Jeff is all too familiar with MS, since his sister Lisa Gibson has lived with the disease for the last 18 years. “My sister’s been a huge inspiration for me. She’s consistently been a top provincial MS fundraiser – something she manages in spite of having a young child and dealing with the symptoms of her disease.”
Shortly after the April 2007 MS Super Cities Walk in Regina, Saskatchewan, Lisa got a call from the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada about Jeff. As one of the walk’s biggest single fundraisers, Jeff had earned a $2,000 travel voucher donated from another sponsor and the Society was trying to track him down. “Selflessly, as is Jeff’s style, he’d refused the vouchers,” explains Gibson. “The person on the other end of the phone was telling me that Jeff had refused the tickets, and instead insisted they be donated to the MS society on my behalf.”
Jeff Armstrong, as his sister will tell you, is that kind of person. A selfless and committed individual who has raised over $70,000 since his first walk over 15 years ago to help find a cure for a disease that impacts 240 of every 100,000 Canadians. Leading up to this year’s walk in April, he raised over $12,000 dollars to put towards his sister’s team, Lisa Jane’s Jelly Beans, which managed to raise over 20 percent of the total funds raised at Saskatchewan’s walk.
“I don’t think I would have been able to walk this year if it wasn’t for my brother,” admits Gibson, after the sudden death of her husband in October 2006 left her feeling unmotivated and not wanting to participate in the actual walk. “When Jeff flew from Toronto for two days dressed in a clown costume with jellybeans glued to his t-shirt and picked me up at my front door in a limousine with a smile on his face, it gave me a tremendous lift. To fly all that way to be with me and support me meant everything.”
In the next three years, Armstrong hopes to hit the $100,000 fundraising mark in his fight against MS – a milestone, he proudly admits, which reflects the generosity of the people around him and Molson, the company where he’s built a home.