Episode 316: 05-14-15
This week’s show focuses on Kids in Need of Defense and how they help children that need a legal defense, allergies and dry eyes season, and how you can get involved with the BNI Foundation to help educate future leaders.
We talk to Wendy Young, President of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), and Andrew Morton, Partner, sports and entertainment law, at Handler Thayer, LLP.
Kids in Need of Defense was founded by Angelina Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation to create a pro bono movement of law firms, corporations, non-governmental organizations, universities and volunteers to provide quality and compassionate legal counsel to unaccompanied refugee and immigrant children in the United States.
Andrew Morton and Wendy Young have been on a years-long crusade to provide the most vulnerable members of our society with legal defense. Hear their heartwarming story as we discuss how they help children that need a legal defense.
Our special UHealth guest is Dr. Anat Galor, who recently found a link between allergies/allergy season and dry eyes.
We discuss the impact on how dry eyes are treated.
Beth Misner is the Founder of The BNI Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1998 by Beth and Ivan Misner. The Misners have always placed a high value on primary and secondary education, realizing that a well-educated work force is imperative for businesses to thrive and succeed and for a country’s economy to be strong.
We discuss the BNI Foundation program and how you can get involved.
Episode 316: 05-14-15 (To download, right-click and select “Save Link As”.)
Transcription:
Intro: 880 AM, The Biz, South Florida’s only all business station welcomes you to Fried on Business. He grew up in South Florida, has been in business here since the early 1990s, and have closed $1 billion in deals. He’s seen it all. He always has an opinion and he’s always ready to share it. Informed, entertaining and connected he has his finger on the throttling pulse of South Florida’s business community. He’s Jim Fried exclusively on 880 AM, The Biz. To talk to Jim and his guest call 305-541-2350. That’s 305-541-2350.
Now, here’s your host, Jim Fried.
Jim Fried: All right, we are not going to spend too much time on warm this week because we’ve got a great show. You’ll find it to be heartwarming, informative, entertaining, heartbreaking. It’s just going to be all of those. Our first guests in the first half-hour will be Wendy Young. She’s the president of Kids in Need of Defense. It’s the foundation that was founded by Angelina Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation. She’s going to be joined by Andrew Morton. He’s a partner and handler there at and entertainment law. We are going to about how they came together, and what they do to help our country’s most vulnerable people that are here. We are going to talk to them about how they provide legal defense for some of the kids that are in legal limbo here in the United States.
Then we are going to have Dr. Anat Galor. We are going to talk about the link between allergies, allergy season and dry eyes, and then our final interview will be with Beth Misner. She’s the founder BNI Institute and they help our work force get better educated by bringing it right into the schools. We are going to take a quick break, then we’ll be right back with Andrew and Wendy talking about our kids and how you can help them, how you can protect. You’ve got to stick in with us on this first interview. It’s going to be awesome. D, take it away.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK].
All right, we are going to get right back to it because we’ve got awesome first half to the show. We’ve got Wendy Young. She’s the president of Kids in Need of Defense, and Andrew Morton. He’s a partner of the sports and entertainment law division at Handler there up in Washington D.C. Welcome to the show gang.
Andrew Morton: It’s good to be back Jim.
Jim Fried: All right, you stepped on Wendy but Wendy we are glad to have you here too. Andrew of course is always out front.
Andrew Morton: I have seniority.
Jim Fried: Fair enough. Wendy, since Andrew talked first, why don’t you pick it up from there and tell us who founded KIND, and why they founded KIND, and what your role is.
Wendy Young: KIND was founded by the general counsel Microsoft, Brad Smith in partnership with UN special envoy Angelina Jolie, which seems like an odd partnership. But they came together in recognition of what’s really a critical legal services gap in the United States, which is the thousands of children who arrive alone in the United States each and these are immigrant and refugee children. When they are picked up by the border patrol, they are immediately placed into deportation proceedings. To move forward with their cases they have to appear in immigration before an immigration judge while the department of Homeland Security prosecutor is arguing for their deportation from the country. The child has to stand there, and raise defense against removal, and ask for refugee protection or some other protection under our immigration laws.
These children are not provided an attorney to help them through these proceedings. I’ve been in immigration courts, and see kids as young as five years old have to stand before a judge and try to make the case by themselves while an experienced trial attorney is arguing for their removal. What we do is match these kids with extraordinary volunteer lawyers across the country from major law firms, and corporations to provide their time, their expertise, the resources for free to represent these kids in their proceedings.
Jim Fried: Wendy, I’ve got just a very basic question here. The look on the kid’s face doesn’t make the case?
Wendy Young: It is really incredible. I’ve been working on this issue for more than two decades and every time I go into court, and these little kids standing before these judges I start to cry. I also feel sorry for the judges because it’s really hard to exercise due process in a courtroom when you’ve got a little kid trying to articulate why they, for example, have a well-founded fear of persecution. The cards are so stacked against these kids and yet 70 percent of them are currently going through immigration court without representation. The child migration crisis that we saw last summer has just made the whole situation much worse.
Jim Fried: They just can’t play them the segments that were done on the big train that comes up from Latin America with these kids. Andrew, how did you and Wendy meet?
Andrew Morton: When I first joined my first law firm Latham & Watkins I was looking to get some pro bono work. I was in the government relations division, and Wendy had forward, and had this idea to introduce legislation that would do a number of things on behalf of the kids. First and foremost was as Wendy mentioned when the kids are picked up they are immediately placed into custody. At the time, they went to INS, now DHS. Part of the bill that we introduced was to create a new division with Health and Human Services, and basically argue while it’s Homeland Security’s job to try to figure out what do with these kids. Whether they are going to be deported, whether they are going to find some form of relief, refugee status or otherwise we still need to take care of them and treat them with dignity in the meantime.
There’s absolutely no reason why the prosecutor should be in a position of having to serve the role of guardian, of legal custodian, and make decisions in the best interest of the child when it’s their primary responsibility to handle law enforcement. Wendy was with a non-profit organization prior to KIND and they became a pro bono client of mine, and we undertook basically an effort that unfortunately not a lot of non-profits understand that they can do. Non-profits seem to have this belief that they are gagged in terms of going to Capitol Hill, and advocating for their mission and that’s not the case. While they are restricted in many ways, lobbying is available to non-profits, and Wendy and I … I think I stopped counting when we hit about 1,700 hours of lobbying work to get this bill past.
Jim Fried: I’m going to ask this in no real order and to no one in particular but why are the kids coming? Where are they coming from and why should we help kids that are coming from someplace else?
Wendy Young: The child migration that we are seeing currently is coming from three countries. Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and what’s driving the migration is really very simple. It’s violence on those three countries, and the violence is being caused by organized criminal cartel that manifest themselves as gang, narco-trafficking, human smuggling, human trafficking, gun smuggling. These are some of the most vicious criminals in the world, and you are talking about three countries with very week governance, and very high levels of corruption in their public sector. These governments are unable to control the violence.
The gangs are very strategically and very specifically targeting children as they take over communities. We have represented girls as young eight years old who have been gang raped by these gangs. Their families may or may not turn to the police for help. If they do turn to police for help, the police typically tell them we can’t do anything about it. They do what any parent would do. They tell their child to run. They start traveling, and they are trying to reach the U.S. southern border so that they can present to a border patrol and ask for protection.
Jim Fried: It sounds to me like it’s very obvious why we should help because we are America. We stand on the side of right, and these young people are being abused for no reason other than gangs that were from what I’ve seen formed up in the United States, and then the members were deported back to their home countries are now bringing the scourge of drugs and illicit violence on to these children. Who wouldn’t put their kid on a train?
Wendy Young: That’s exactly right and these are refugees first and foremost, and they do what refugees do. They run to where they think they are going to get protection. Many of the children who come into the United States do have family connections to the United States. They are hoping that their family who is here will offer them that safe haven that they so desperately need.
Jim Fried: We are down here in Miami. We have a lot of refugees that come here by boat. We have wet foot, dry foot. We have some other unusual protections from the kids down here but the Haitians come. My question is are you seeing kids coming into South Florida with this problem or is it simply a hard border state issue?
Wendy Young: The kids are primarily arriving in South Texas, and that’s because of the smuggling roads from Central America to the US that they track that direction, and they arrive in South Texas. Having said that the kids as Andrew says the kids are taken into Federal custody, and they are dispersed across the country. In Miami, for example, you have some large children’s detention facilities where the kids are held temporarily while they are processed.
Jim Fried: Andrew, I know that you’ve got a practice that’s replete with very high-powered clients. Are you getting them enlisted in this cause also?
Andrew Morton: To be honest with you, the athletes that I represent tend to be attracted more to the issues that they grew up with. I see a lot of inner city support. A lot of before school, after school mentoring programs, a lot of things related to something with which they can identify. To the extent that we can find some celebrities who have experienced this, absolutely but Wendy’s had no shortage, who’ve stepped forwarded and hosted their fund raising events or have lent support through media appearances. It’s certainly an issue that’s easy to understand why we need to get involved.
One point to take the lawyer position for a moment is there could be listeners or folks out there. I certainly understand that there are two sides to the immigration issue. Not everybody believes that whoever gets to this country should become a citizen or get a Green Card. That’s not really, what we are talking about. What we are talking about is the opportunity is to have a lawyer take a look at the issue.
The tragedy for me looking at some of these cases was seeing the kids who had a legitimate avenue to relief but had no advocate to articulate that position. The judge can’t do it on their own. As Wendy said, the prosecuting attorneys are experienced and that’s their hob. What we are trying to do is not necessarily get relief for every kid who comes into the country but have every kid’s case evaluated by lawyer who understands the law and can figure out whether there is a legitimate avenue for relief.
Jim Fried: Isn’t that what makes America great is that in our courts everybody has the right to be represented competently? That’s for you Andrew, you are the lawyer bud.
Andrew Morton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that’s … I decided early on in my legal career I didn’t want to be that guy who gets somebody else on a technicality or who that’s not interesting to me. I believe that everybody should have their evaluated and there are certainly cases that Wendy and I have seen where we’ve come to the conclusion there is just no legitimate course of relief. Even in that case the child needs to be treated with dignity. We need to treat them in a humane manner. We need to provide them with basic services and make sure that if they do have to be returned they are returned to safe environment. It’s not just these prosecutors at Homeland Security trying to raise their percentage of deportations.
What we need to do is find out whether there’s something that we can do, and if there’s not make sure that whatever the situation is back at home is a reasonable situation, a safe situation, and doesn’t have the child back crossing the border in another few months. Wendy and I have those cases as well.
Jim Fried: Ever since you introduced me to Wendy I’ve been following them on Twitter, looking them up on Facebook, watching Google and LinkedIn on them, and I’ve got to say is that all of their materials are heartwarming. Wendy, we are going to take a break but before we do, so people that are listening in their offices, which I know no one really does that while they are work but let’s assume that they might be. What’s your website, the Twitter handle, something that people can go and take a look at and we are going to talk about this again in the second half, a lot? We’ll mention this a lot so people can write it down, people can go look because I’ve got to tell you.
We talk about Lauren’s kids all the time and sexual abuse here in the US. These people are feeling it from international sources. Wendy, I’ve given people a couple of seconds to grab a pencil. You are on. Let’s talk about how they can get more info.
Wendy Young: Sure, our website is www.supportkind.org. We love visitors to our website, and we love volunteers.
Jim Fried: Listen, we are going to come back. We are going to make the case all over again, because people have been getting in their cars. There’s a lot more good stories here to tell. We’ll be right back after this short break. We are going to be right back with Wendy president of Kids in Need of Defense and Andrew Morton. Golly, their white knight in shining armor. D, take it away.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK].
All right, just in case you didn’t pick it up that was sitting in limbo. We are talking about the kids that need legal help, and legal defense. Gosh, darn it this is in the United States. Hey, we at least in giving everybody a fair shot in our courts.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK].
We are talking to Wendy Young. She’s the president of Kids in Need of Defense and Andrew Morton. Knight in shining armor. Later on in the show we are going to talk to Dr. Anat Galor about the link between allergies, and allergy season and dries, and the last segment we’ll talk to Beth Misner BNI Foundation about how you can educate kids in class but we are back talking about the children here in the United States that need defense.
Andrew layout the predicate of what we are talking about here.
Andrew Morton: Sure, there’s … basically there are children who are picked up, children who are coming across the border who don’t have legal status here, and under our laws they are taken into Federal custody. There are a number of avenues for children to find relief whether it’s a Green Card, or it’s called a special immigrant juvenile visa or a number of other types of status to be stay. For some children there is no avenue to be able to stay but what we are talking about here is the opportunity, in my opinion the requirement that these children have legal counsel who can evaluate their case, who can advocate for them in front of an immigration judge, or negotiate with Homeland Security. Try to figure out both what is going to happen ultimately for that child’s future in terms of being able to remain in the country and certainly in the meantime how are they going to be treated while we are awaiting that final decision.
Jim Fried: You know we don’t do politics here in the show, and immigration reform or whatever you want to call it is a political issue but I really think that humanity is not a political issue. Wendy this is a humanity issue. This isn’t politics. I’m I right about that?
Wendy Young: That’s absolutely right and if there’s one thing that unifies us around the globe it’s loving and caring for children really the most vulnerable of people out there. I have to say in our work it’s extraordinarily hard sometimes but what’s really encouraging is how many volunteers come to KIND wanting to use their time, their resources, their expertise to help these children and particular lawyer tend to get a bad rap in this country.
Jim Fried: Really.
Wendy Young: Pro bono effort by the legal community on behalf of these kids is incredible. We began our organization in 2009, and we’ve trained over 10,000 lawyers to represent these children for free.
Jim Fried: It seems to me like that’s just my need to do that as a human being. Why don’t we give the places where people can get information and then we’ll keep on going? Wendy, where can get information, contact you, that kind of stuff.
Wendy Young: Again, my website is www.supportkind.org.
Jim Fried: Okay. We are here. We are looking at getting this done. We are looking at creating a safe and healthy environment. I’ve got to tell you, I can’t remember what scared me the most when I was five or six years old but I bet these kids will never forget. How do you help them overcome the trauma they are going through Wendy?
Wendy Young: That is a huge challenge. These kids they’ve faced horrendous violence in their home countries, and then they’ve made very treacherous, very dangerous trip to the United States that often takes weeks or even months for them to get here. Then they are taken into detention, and they are locked in facilities once here, and then forced to face a judge without an attorney. The trauma factor cannot be understated. What we try to do in our work is not only provide them with legal representation but also try to link them with sources of psychosocial support, some who can really help them understand that trauma and come to grip with happening in their lives.
Jim Fried: I’m getting a text in reminding me to make sure that I mention Lauren’s kids. We work with Lauren’s kids here in the United States. They are all about preventing child sexual abuse, 95 percent of child sexual abuse could be prevented by education. I’ve got to tell you I don’t think any of the little criminals in Honduras, or Guatemala are interested in education and I don’t think that if you educated the parents down there that there’s much they could do against these criminal gangs. That’s not like the United States down there. What kind of education can we give people? What can we really do? Is there anything proactive that we can do or can we only help them with lawyers and try to help them navigate the legal system?
Wendy Young: I think you actually put your finger on something else which we are actually advocating for which is we need to actually look at the root causes of this child migration. We need to help these countries fix themselves. The good news is these are really tiny countries in the overall scheme of things. They are right on back door Jim but they are becoming breeding grounds for these gangs and narco-trafficking. We also have self-interest in trying to help them recover from the kind of violence that’s occurring there to get pm track for democracy, for economic development, for strong education systems. So that these kids and their families have an opportunity to stay home because at the end of the day that’s the real solution to the problem.
Jim Fried: Andrew, a lot of people listen to our show and one of the things that your firm helps people do is structure their business practices so that they can afford to be philanthropic. Is this a charity that really qualifies? It’s a 501 C 3 so a donation here is a deduction, right?
Andrew Morton: Absolutely, right. I mean right. KIND is a non-profit. I would love to see donations going to KIND. I’m sure conspicuous on the website there’s going to be a big rectangle that says donate now and absolutely that we’ll attach a deductible contribution. We’ve only got about a minute. No offense to you Andrew. You led off. I’m going to let Wendy be the cleanup hitter. Wendy, I just want you to give me a real short, heartwarming story and then how people can get a lot of you guys.
Wendy Young: The story that I always remember is going into immigration court in Baltimore, Maryland and seeing a little five-year-old girl who was dressed in her Sunday best, and clutching a doll. She was asked to appear before the immigration judge. She couldn’t even see over the microphone. She was so tiny, and the judge started to ask her questions about why she had come to the United States. That little girl couldn’t answer a single one of those questions. Her eyes got bigger and bigger and bigger as the judge asked her questions.
Finally, he dismissed her and as she was leaving he said, “What’s the name of your doll?” and in Spanish she said, “Baby, baby doll.” That’s the only answer he got in that entire hearing.
Jim Fried: All right, now that you made me breakdown on the radio, why don’t you tell people how they can do something about that heinous tragedy.
Wendy Young: Please volunteer your time, volunteer your resources. We need all the help that we can get and again, our website is supportkind.org. We are happy to talk to you at any time about what you can do to help these really vulnerable kids.
Jim Fried: God bless you. God bless you Wendy. God bless your white knight in shining armor. Did I get it right that time Andrew?
Andrew Morton: Yeah, right.
Jim Fried: Listen, you guys keep on fighting the good fight. I’ll help anyway I can. D, you take us away. You bring us back. We’ll talk about dry eyes although I don’t think there’s dry eyes in the house after that first half hour. Gang thank you so much. Andrew Morton thank you so much. Wendy I really want to thank you both. You really mean a lot to me and I want to thank you for enlightening our audience today.
Wendy Young: Thank you Jim.
Andrew Morton: You’ve got it.
Jim Fried: We’ll be back D. show’s all yours.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK].
Jim Fried: All right. I keep getting texts about KIND, Kids in Need of Defense. You can go to supportkind.org. You’ve got to help these kids. Just all you do is tell … here’s a little story about the little girl clutching her doll. I wanted to … my gosh, it’s heartbreaking.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK].
Dr. Anat Galor is our special UHealth guest. Dr. Galor recently found a link between allergies, allergy season and dry eyes. These is going to affect how dry eyes are treated in the future. I know it’s important because my gosh, I grew up with itchy dry eyes, and half my family suffers from allergies. Dr. Galor welcome to the show.
Dr. Anat Galor: Thank you for having me.
Jim Fried: It’s my pleasure. What’s the link and what does it mean?
Dr. Anat Galor: This is preliminary data but it’s exciting because traditionally dry eye and allergy are considered two separate conditions but what we found looking at a National VA database is that dry eye diagnosis was more common in the spring, most common in the spring and that’s exactly when the pollen and the allergy index was high. This is an association but what it’s showing is that more patients are being diagnosed with dry eyes when the allergy index is high, and it suggests that maybe some cases with dry eyes actually have a component of allergy.
Jim Fried: Wow, it just makes all the sense in the world to me. I drive around. I get my car cleaned on Friday, by Friday morning, by Friday afternoon it’s covered with dust, and pollen. We’ve got two industries in Florida that put that stuff out like crazy. We’ve got our agriculture, and we’ve got construction. I’ve got to tell you it’s got to be brutal on the people with allergies.
Dr. Anat Galor: Absolutely, and I think it’s really important for the patients to think about it, and also for the doctors to think about it. It’s exactly what you said, the treatment for traditional dry eyes is different and doesn’t really include allergy medication. Some of these dry eyes suffers who aren’t doing well just with artificial tears alone if they’ve got the right symptoms, or they come in the right season they really may benefit from anti-allergy treatment.
Jim Fried: It’s not just I’ll say Visine and Clear Eyes. There’s real medications that are artificial tears.
Dr. Anat Galor: Actually, ophthalmologist’s advice not to use Visine and Clear Eyes on a long-term basis because what end up getting is getting rebound retinas when you stop. Those are good on a short-term basis but we recommend for dry eye to use artificial tears without any other medication and sometimes without preservatives if you have to use them frequently. Then there’s a separate class of medications that treat ocular allergy that are antihistamines, and mast cell stabilizers and those aren’t traditionally used in dry eye.
Jim Fried: What you are finding is that the dry eyes and the allergy suppressant medications could actually work together and really bring people some quality relief.
Dr. Anat Galor: Right, this is preliminary data, and it’s showing an association but we definitely think that this is something that we need to study more because we know that there’s a lot of people out there with dry eye where artificial tears just aren’t enough, and we really need to understand what’s driving those symptoms in those patients. This is just one more direction that we need to look at.
Jim Fried: What’s your next step?
Dr. Anat Galor: The next step is to look more closely at the factors that are driving the symptoms, and to look at patients longitudinally so it can be more of a cause and effect and not just an association.
Jim Fried: I guess that UHealth and their laboratories over there give you a pretty good environment to do this in then.
Dr. Anat Galor: Absolutely, it’s the best.
Jim Fried: You came to UHealth, where were you practicing before?
Dr. Anat Galor: I was in Pittsburg.
Jim Fried: I wonder why you moved. Don’t answer that question. We’ve got Steelers fans that listen to the show.
Dr. Anat Galor: That’s true and they really take it seriously.
Jim Fried: They sure do. How long have you down at UHealth?
Dr. Anat Galor: About eight years.
Jim Fried: Is this you’re one program or you work another? Do you have some other stuff you are looking at to, or looking at? Listen to me, looking at.
Dr. Anat Galor: Very good, wow, yes. We have a big research program looking at various ocular surface diseases. Dry eye and allergy is one of them. The other one in collaboration with Carol Karp. We do a lot of things on ocular surface tumors, which again, we see a lot of MIM maybe because they are associated with the sun exposure. It’s a very exciting research program that we’ve got.
Jim Fried: Wow, what a great resource you folks at UHealth are for us down here. You’ve got anything else on the horizon that you are looking at studying? Oh my god. I keep saying looking at and you said it too for the record.
Dr. Anat Galor: Going back to dry eye we are really interested in looking more than just dry eyes and sub-typing it into different categories, and we think that allergy induced dry eyes is one but another thing we think is that a lot of people that walk around with a diagnosis of dry eyes really have ocular pain. That maybe a problem with the nerves that connect the eye to the brain, and not a tear problem. We are really looking at characterizing those patients to see if need to treat them differently as well.
Jim Fried: That’s really interesting. I’ve got to just tell you is that that every time I think about going to the doctor, and I was at Bascom Palmer where I got a work up on my eyes. That’s why I’m using the 2.0s now instead of the 1.5. I went to Bascom Palmer. I was amazed at the speed and efficiency and the positive energy. You’ve got your own building. You’ve got your own parking. You’ve got your own valet. How do people find you and make appointments to go get their dry eyes checked?
Dr. Anat Galor: Several ways. The address is 900 North West 17th Street downtown, and not only that but we actually have an ocular surface center in Plantation that specializes in all sorts of ocular surface diseases and dry eyes. Both the Plantation Bascom Palmer and the Miami Bascom Palmer really have the equipment, and the personnel, and the capabilities to diagnose and treat dry eyes.
Jim Fried: You mentioned that sun exposure causes some problems. You mentioned that the construction and pollen causes problems down here. What are some of the other factors in South Florida that make it an especially dangerous place for eyes?
Dr. Anat Galor: I think you’ve hit on a lot of them. We really don’t enough about how sun exposure affects our eyes and it’s not just cancer but it’s also benign growths and other factors that are really influence eye health. Just a tip is really sun glasses are a very good idea in South Florida with the amount of sun we have.
Jim Fried: UV or non-UV or does it really matter? Is it all BS?
Dr. Anat Galor: Most sunglasses, even the cheap here have UV protection. Yes but it is important to make sure that they are UV blocking.
Jim Fried: Great. What are some of the other folks that Bascom Palmer’s studying? We’ve talked about dry. We’ve talked about these ocular surface diseases. What are some of the other neat stuff that some of your peers are working on?
Dr. Anat Galor: Absolutely. It’s amazing how sub-specialized ophthalmology has become and we’ve got specialists from every single field from glaucoma to retina to neutron-ophthalmology to ocular plastics and I have to say that my colleagues are all really, excellent.
Jim Fried: Pick out one thing that’s really cool that we haven’t talked about yet.
Dr. Anat Galor: That’s a tough one.
Jim Fried: I’ll give you five seconds.
Dr. Anat Galor: Really cool …
Jim Fried: Yeah.
Dr. Anat Galor: One thing that’s really cool is the fact that ophthalmology has a lot of toys and new technology and we have a bunch of new lasers that we use to try to improve outcomes both of cataract surgery and of corneal surgery. It’s really interesting to see how technology can really drive innovation, and improve patient outcomes. It’s really an exciting time, and we have lots of great people doing great research on this.
Jim Fried: That’s great. You’ve got any others you want to give a shout out to.
Dr. Anat Galor: Victor Perez is the head of Ocular Surface Center in Plantation and he really is the leader in very severe dry eyes and ocular surface disease. He’s the one who founded the institute there and I have to give him full credit for that.
Jim Fried: It sounds like he’s got an awesome team not the least of which is you being a key member/doctor. Anat Galor, I’m I saying that right?
Dr. Anat Galor: You are. That’s actually very good. I’m impressed.
Jim Fried: Thanks, I practiced for 10 minutes before you came on. Listen, Dr. Galor I want to thank you so much. Eyes are really important to me because without them I wouldn’t know what’s going on around me.
Dr. Anat Galor: We feel the same way. Thank you very much in letting us tell you a little bit, about what we do.
Jim Fried: It’s my pleasure. Again, if people want to find you, how do they do that?
Dr. Anat Galor: You can go on the website, and type in Bascom Palmer and they’ll find us, or you can call the UHealth number and ask for a physician at Bascom Palmer and they can navigate the way.
Jim Fried: Here you go. I’ve got it right here. This is my favorite. 305-243 … here it comes 2020.
Dr. Anat Galor: There you go.
Jim Fried: 305-243-2020 the campiest phone number in Miami but it takes care of what’s important to us, our eyes. I want to thank Dr. Anat Galor. I keep on trying to make a mistake and I don’t think I am.
Dr. Anat Galor: No, perfect.
Jim Fried: Thank her for coming and educating us about our eyes. Stick with us. We are going to have Beth Misner. She’s Ivan Misner’s wife. She’s the funder of the BNI Foundation. We are going to talk about how to get a well-educated work force by participating in education at the school level in your community. We’ll back after this. Dr. Galor thank you so much.
Dr. Anat Galor: Thank you.
Jim Fried: D, it’s all yours. Push the button.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Jim Fried: All right, I’m clapping. I’m dancing. I’m clapping. I’m dancing. D, thank you for playing my favorite happy song and giving me positive energy as I head into the fourth quarter where I’m going to interview Beth Misner about the BNI Foundation everybody can bring educational standards up in their schools by getting involved.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
We’ve talked today about kids, protecting our kids that are coming across the border with working Kids in Need of Defense. We also tied that in with Lauren’s Kids. We talked about the fact that 95 percent of child sexual abuse can be prevented with education. I think by now you what I think about kids. They are our most important resource. We have to protect them anyway, we can. Go to laurenskids.org learn what you can do in our community. Look up Kids in Need of Defense, KIND online. It’s just important. Get involved with protecting our future, our resources, our kids. We’ll have Lauren Book on in the next couple of weeks talking about her trip around the state that she just finished where she goes and touches the lives of every kid. But makes sure you go to laurenskids.org to learn today what you can do to help protect your children, and the children of your friends from child sexual abuse. D.
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Hi everybody. We are back remember to join us next week. We are going to have a focus on technology. We are going to have the folks from e-Merge, America’s on and real insurance will be back and we’ll have the Night Foundation talking about creating a network in environment that advocates and promotes technological innovation. Now we’ve got a real innovator on our show. Beth Misner, she’s the founder of the BNI Foundation. The foundation was founded in 1998 by Beth and her husband Ivan. The Misner’s have always placed a high value on primary and secondary education. We are going to hear how you can get involved in your schools with BNI to make the world a better place and help America stay great. Beth, welcome to the show.
Beth Misner: Hey Jim, thank you so much.
Jim Fried: It’s my absolute pleasure. Tell me a little bit about the BNI Foundation and what you are doing tom help America’s work force stay educated.
Beth Misner: The BNI Foundation has a specific focus on children and education like you said. We want to help kids graduate from high school, and that entails everything from getting them ready to go into kindergarten to keeping their interest in middle school and keeping them out of the street, off of drugs and out of risky behavior in high school. So that they are engaged, in their class work and whatever it might be music or athletics and so they see the course all the way to the end and graduate.
Jim Fried: What is your business voices initiative?
Beth Misner: Business voices is a new movement that we just started. It’s in response to the civil unrest that’s been happening in Ferguson and Baltimore. We want to encourage and inspire business owners to actually begin investing in the youth of America. It’s a very simple process. Business owners working together can collaborate to meet with the schools, find out what their needs are and get busy helping the schools meet those needs. We are tired of waiting for somebody else to fix this. We are entrepreneurs. BNI is full of business leaders and entrepreneurs in all the communities where we have chapters. We want to get in and really do some grassroots work at solving some of these issues with our school.
Jim Fried: You are not the only high profile thought leaders involved. Not just you, not just Ivan but I saw that Richard Branson is participating in this to some degree to, isn’t he?
Beth Misner: He is supporting me and mentoring me in a way, very interested in what we are doing because it definitely ties in with his B Team plan, his concept that business be noble and that business can be interested in elevating people and the planet as well as office. We are applying to see one of his B Team businesses, and I’ve been invited to start blogging on the Huffington Post on behalf of the B Team. He’s welcoming what’s happening. He really has inspired myself and Ivan with this movement to really take to heart what he saying about being interested in more than just making money for the purpose of making money.
We want to do well in our businesses so that we can do good in our community.
Jim Fried: You’ve got three simple steps plus one that help people have a road map for doing this and we only got a couple of minutes left. Let’s try to go through this and make sure we get all this in.
Beth Misner: That sounds great and my three plus one formula is also on our website Businessvoices.org. Very simple point 1, get a referral to a school. Get referred into a school principal. Point 2, take your referral partner and go meet with the principal and find out what their needs are. Point 3 is to go back to your business community whether it’s a Rotary Club, your Optimist group, or your BNI Chapter. Share what the needs are and watch how many people come forward to help out and the plus one is tell the story of what happened.
We have this happen in North Carolina. They found out that their number one need in elementary school is shoes, kids coming to school without shoes. In two weeks, they did a shoe drive. It’s a beautiful thing and we captured that story and now it can inspire and motivate others to help out.
Jim Fried: Beth, if people want to get involved besides joining a local BNI Chapter, how can they get some more information? Your website, your Twitter account, things like that.
Beth Misner: The website is great businessvoices.org. We also have a very active Facebook page, and it’s under BNI Foundation. If you follow us on Facebook, you’ll see what’s happening. You can actually ask me questions about projects you may have in your area and whether they would qualify for funding from the BNI Foundation. We’d love to hear from you.
Jim Fried: I just have one last question Beth and I think I already know the answer but how can I help you?
Beth Misner: I love your question. Keep tweeting, keep posting and let’s keep this conversation going online. Thank you Jim.
Jim Fried: It’s my absolute pleasure. Beth, we’ll have your interview up on the website. We’ll tweet it at you. We’ll Facebook it to you. We’ll do all those great things. I want to thank you so much for being on our show and I look forward to having Ivan on in just a couple of weeks.
Beth Misner: Greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Jim Fried: It’s my absolute pleasure. Beth Misner founder of the BNI Foundation doing great things in our schools to help keep America great. My gosh, I don’t know if you heard the beginning of the show or not but if you did I don’t know how you couldn’t stop for crying on that one where they talked about the little girl being up in front of the judge, holding her dolly and asking. Oh my gosh. Please, if you haven’t heard what we talked about at the beginning of our show defending children in the courts system make sure you go to www.friedonbusiness.com probably starting late tomorrow or early Saturday that will be up on the website. You’ve just got to hear what Kids in Need of Defense is all about and our conversation with the president Wendy Young and Andrew Morton. I want to thank them for being on the show.
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