When the top job at the Our Lady of the Lake Foundation became available, John Paul Funes had to figure out where he stood to do the maximum good: as administrator of OLOL Children’s Hospital, which he was already doing, or foundation president?
As it happens, he’s doing both, albeit temporarily. Funes is still wearing his administrator hat as he settles into the president’s job, so you might say he’s busy. As foundation president, Funes plans to help take the organization “to another level” in fundraising.
He took the job in part because the foundation’s first order of business will be to raise funds for a new, freestanding children’s hospital—something badly needed. The challenge, with Louisiana’s high rate of Medicaid and uninsured patients, is how to fund it. That’s where Funes comes in.
He says he didn’t necessarily intend to stay in Baton Rouge, his hometown, where he returned after graduating from school in Houston, but OLOL exerted a strong pull.
“I’d worked in different businesses,” Funes says. “I’d worked in industrial construction, but to see a place where the dollar wasn’t the bottom line: that kind of environment is contagious. It’s still a business and there’s still a lot of accountability, but when that’s the main mission of the organization, it’s one of those things that kind of sucks you in.”
The same goes for volunteering—particularly Special Olympics. Funes has directed the Baton Rouge games since 1995. He’s following the example of his dad, a pediatrician who’s volunteered with Special Olympics for years. His parents’ volunteerism, in fact, has influenced Funes significantly. He distinctly remembers his mom going to play bingo with patients at the Hansen’s Disease Center in Carville, for instance.
“Those things stick with you,” Funes days. “You ask yourself why are they doing that? Why don’t we just stay at home? It takes until you mature as a person to figure out why that is.”
What was your first job?
“Bus boy at Café Lagrange on Acadian Thruway. This job taught me more about people than any course I took in high school,
college or graduate school.”
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