Bill Peters
President
Jabil
Beth Walters
Senior Vice President,
Communications and Investor Relations
Jabil
According to two of Jabil’s top leaders, it didn’t take much convincing to get the tech giant’s team to apply their entrepreneurial spirit to fundraising efforts for the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk. “I think the mission was easy to sell because cardiovascular disease touches so many people,” President Bill Peters says. “That kind of resonated. There’s always a bit of competition at Jabil to come up with the coolest, craziest things.” “The employees at Jabil, when we jump into things, we tend to do it pretty big,” adds Senior Vice President Beth Walters, who has also partnered with the AHA for the STEM Goes Red program to encourage more young girls to enter the science, technology, engineering and math fields.
“We have a tremendous base of women involved in STEM at Jabil who want to encourage and bring those young girls along,” she says. “Their enthusiasm for engaging with these women has just helped so much, so we’re building the curriculum along with the AHA to do this.” From interoffice contests to a mock NFL draft held to select the Heart Walk teams (Peters says someone even came in wearing a suit and tie to read off the draft picks), Jabil quickly became one of the AHA’s strongest partners in Tampa Bay after Peters first chaired the walk in 2013. The company has also embraced a culture of healthy living, with fitness centers at each office location around the globe, in-office bootcamps and walking clubs, and lunch-and-learn meetings with some of Jabil’s team members who have survived cardiac events. “That just drives home the point more,” Walters says. “People see it as more tangible.”
Jabil engaged deeper with the AHA last year when CEO Mark Mondello challenged Jabil’s roughly 100 officers to learn CPR; 15 months later, 90 percent are trained. “I talked to the folks at the AHA, and they jumped right in,” Peters says. “We started having sessions 30 or 40 days later, and they’ve come back numerous times. We have executives all over the world, so for us to hit that 90 percent mark, with the AHA helping with the training, has been impressive.”
Jabil
10560 Dr. MLK Jr. St. N. St. Petersburg, FL 33716
(727) 577-9749
jabil.com
See how other local leaders are supporting the American Heart Association here.
