How a National Crisis Propelled a Charity Leader’s Career

I was the middle child in a family of schoolteachers, and I was lucky enough to grow up in a happy, middle-class household in Gettysburg, Pa. I had a grandmother with whom

TAMI BREAM Age: 41 First professional job: Assistant manager of the junior’s department, Bloomingdale’s, Philadelphia. Current job: Executive director, Angel Flight East, Fort Washington, Pa.

I was very close and who spent her life working for social-service organizations. I really looked at what she did and thought that helping people was a great way to live, plus my parents always had the philosophy of quietly helping others whenever possible.

At Mount Saint Mary’s College, in Emmitsburg, Md., I took a number of business courses and fell into accounting because I really liked working with numbers. However, I thought I wanted to work in retail, so the first two years after college I was with Bloomingdale’s.

But it turned out that was not what I wanted to do, so I left and went to work as an accountant for a commercial-property management company. Later I was employed as the controller and account executive for two private aviation companies. Working with numbers, one has to be very precise and make certain there are no discrepancies in the bookkeeping. As an accountant, each position gave me more insight into how important it is to understand the relationship between the income and the outgo of money and how to run a company profitably, as well as efficiently.

It was while I was at the first aviation company that I heard about Angel Flight East, which is a group of pilots who donate their time and expenses to fly financially disadvantaged people with serious medical problems to places where they can receive treatment. One of my friends was on the Board of Directors, and he was looking for someone to handle the organization’s bank deposits, bookkeeping, and so forth, which I did on a volunteer basis, beginning in 1993.

From there I began taking charge of the newsletter, and then Angel Flight began to get into fund raising, so I thought, “Why not?,” even though I had no fund-raising experience. Our first fund-raising effort was an art auction, and then we put on a vintage aircraft day, which Angel Flight East has repeated for 15 years.

While volunteering for Angel Flight, I was still working in the for-profit world, most recently as the chief financial officer for a consulting firm. However on September 11, 2001, everything changed. I was at my office when the president of Angel Flight East called me and said, “Have you heard?” I got on the Internet, and then I heard him say, “Oh, my God, there goes another one!”

I immediately headed to the Angel Flight office and pretty much spent the next several days there. I got on the phone and started calling all kinds of people — the Federal Aviation Administration, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the police, and the military. Angel Flight brought in our volunteers and started determining who could fly.

With the help of Angel Flight Georgia, we flew the managing director of emergency services for the American Red Cross from Atlanta to Washington. In addition, our volunteers were transporting a lot of blood and medicine, as well as search dogs and their handlers.

Before September 2001 ended, the board came to me and, realizing Angel Flight East needed a full-time director, asked me to stay for a couple of months. I took a leave of absence from my job at the consulting firm, and that two months turned into a year. That was the fastest year of my life — we were doing so many good things, we were growing and helping more people. At the end of that year, the board asked me to become the executive director, and I said yes.

I went back to my for-profit boss and resigned. He pretty much knew. He definitely had seen the passion I had for what I was doing.

From the point of view of the Angel Flight East Board of Directors, it didn’t hurt that I had worked in aviation before, but my background in the for-profit world was also important. Angel Flight was at a juncture where our budget went from $50,000 to $200,000 as a result of a large donation — it has since risen to $370,000 — and the board wanted to be sure that someone was in charge who understood how to spend money, run a charity efficiently, and make sure the books made sense.

Last year Angel Flight East flew 1,100 people, about 60 percent of whom were children, for medical treatment. We have a database of more than 500 pilots, and when we get phone calls from families, social workers, or physicians, we put together a spreadsheet of the passenger, his weight, and how many nautical miles he needs to fly. That information is sent via e-mail to our 500 pilots, and 50 percent of the time a pilot will e-mail to say he’ll take the assignment.

When I don’t get a response, I get on the phone — it takes an average of 23 phone calls to coordinate one mission — and start calling pilots asking for help.

It’s very hard not to get attached to our clients. We had a little girl who had a rare blood disease that we flew, along with her family, several times for treatment. When she died last April, we flew her body home for burial because her mother just couldn’t face a commercial flight. I was really crushed by her death and just sat in my office and cried.

However, I’m never going back to the corporate world. I’m really hooked. When you do this sort of work, you rarely hear people say no. Angel Flight East really gives hope to families that don’t have much of it.