NBN sat down with Dance Marathon's Finance co-chairs Nate Korn and Kalli Koukounas during Block 6.
NBN: So has being finance chair lived up what you expected when you took this job?
Koukounas: I had zero expectations because I had never been on the committee before. I had always previously been on Marketing, actually. So I was just totally ready for a a new different experience on the committee and as a co-chair. And I think it's totally comparing and contrasting my experience on marketing, and that has been very rewarding for me to see two different sides of the organization that complement each other really well.
NBN: For you?
Korn: For me, as someone who's been on the committee for two years, I think that there were some expectations that it lived up to in terms of the types of projects that I would work on, but I didn't really realize how much of a broader sense of the organization that I would get to see than just being on the committee.
NBN: How is Gigi's Playhouse planning to use the money that DM raises?
Koukounas: There's a very specific breakdown but basically it's split between a bunch of their therapeutic programs. So it would go to helping build their GigiFit program which is their fitness program. It would help toward the Amina Grace Speech and Language Pathology Program which is to help develop the muscle tone in their mouths in order to get them to speak and help them develop a vocabulary, that kind of thing. And that's actually really close to our hearts because our liaison Maura is the mother of Amina, who passed away, actually, from complications due to Down syndrome. And so the program is named after her, so this will definitely go to help building this program because Amina loved to read. And then a couple other things.
Korn: Yeah, and then the last thing that our board was really into was the Mobile Playhouse program which we focused on in our 30 Before 30 initiative that kind of brings Gigi's services to neighborhoods that would usually not be able to access them due to rural locations, urban locations, different socioeconomic circumstances. And it kind of gives different kits and weekly and monthly therapy sessions to people in those neighborhoods. And that's kind of what we've worked out for this year [with Gigi's Playhouse].
Koukounas: And we would totally start that whole program for them which is really incredible.
NBN: Wow, that's awesome. Last question - do you guys think you'll exceed last year's total?
Koukounas: That's not our benchmark. For us, the success of the event and if people have fun, if we are able to provide a tangible impact on the beneficiary and on how campus understands the cause is way more important to us than the number we put on the final total board. So for us, that's not what's on our mind, so we've never really been benchmarking that.