Kathy Hayes earned a degree in Political Science from U.C. Davis in 1986. She worked over 20 years in the public affairs arena including working for State Senator (now Congressman) Mike Thompson. She served as the CEO for the North Bay Association of REALTORS and as program director for Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County.

Kathy taught as a substitute teacher at Elsie Allen High School and for the past 7 years has served as the Administration Assistant at Elsie Allen. Over the years, she has served on the boards of numerous non-profits including Becoming Independent, American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity. She has also served on the City of Santa Rosa Community Services Board, Santa Rosa City Schools Facilities Committee and the Santa Rosa City School Boundary Committee . Currently, Kathy serves on the Elsie Allen Site Council and is the secretary for CSEA Chapter 75. Kathy is the proud parent of twin boys who graduated from UC Berkeley and working in the political and data science arenas.

On a regular basis, our resident photo pro Warren Smith, submits pictures of what is going on at the weekly meetings. You can always find the most recent pictures at the websites photo journal called "Meeting Sighting" Please note that all the meeting photos for the entire Rotary year are at this location with the most recent on the last page.

Thanks for all the great pictures Warren! Link to Meeting Sightings. The most recent are on the last page!

Aminu Ahmed Tudun-Wada knows what polio takes from a child. He contracted the disease as a young boy in Kano, Nigeria, and was left paralyzed.

Decades later, when Nigeria was struggling to eradicate polio, Aminu decided that he would use his experience to help protect other children.

He brought together polio survivors and began going door to door, talking with parents about vaccination. The survivors told their stories. They showed families the effects of polio. And they urged parents to make sure their children never had to go through the same experience.

By 2021, the Polio Survivors Group that Aminu founded had grown to more than 400 members. Their work helped Nigeria reach a milestone that once seemed impossible: In 2020, the World Health Organization certified Nigeria, and the entire African region, free of wild poliovirus.

I think about people like Aminu whenever we talk about ending polio. Eradication is about children who will never know what it means to lose the ability to walk. It is about parents who will never have to watch a healthy child become paralyzed by a disease that vaccines can prevent.

And it is about making sure the people who remember polio become the last generation that does. Rotary has been part of this fight for more than four decades. Together with our partners, we have helped vaccinate more than 3 billion children, contributed more than $3 billion to the global effort, and reduced cases of wild poliovirus by 99.9 percent.

But 99.9 percent is not 100 percent.

Wild poliovirus remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As long as it circulates anywhere, children everywhere remain at risk. And even after wild poliovirus disappears from a country, we must maintain strong immunization and surveillance systems so the virus cannot find a way back.

Aminu could have looked at his own experience and asked, “Why me?” Instead, he asked a different question: “How can I make sure this does not happen to another child?” That is the spirit we need now.

The final mile of any journey can be the hardest. But we have walked too far, worked too hard, and protected too many children to stop here.

Let us remember why we began. Let us listen to those who have experienced polio. Let us be the generation that creates lasting impact and ensures no one ever experiences polio again.

Being a rock is Rotary’s quiet superpower, and with this year’s instability we’ve been reminded how much that matters.

Families face displacement, communities navigate climate shocks, and humanitarian needs arise both close to home and across the places we serve. These realities touch us. Yet even as the world shifts, Rotary’s response remains steady, compassionate, and effective. We don’t turn away from uncertainty — we meet it with purpose.

The Rotary Foundation was not built for fair weather. Over the last decade, we have strengthened our approach: weaving sustainability into every project, expanding partnerships, and embracing evidence-based solutions. This evolution has made us more resilient and more community-driven.

It’s why our comprehensive goal of raising $500 million across the Annual Fund, Endowment Fund, and PolioPlus Fund is not only ambitious but achievable. We’ve proved before that we could reach it, and momentum is building again.

While global attention shifts from one crisis to the next, Rotary stays. We convene partners who might never otherwise collaborate. We mobilize resources quickly because our networks are already in place, built through decades of trust. And we strengthen communities not through one-time interventions but by sustained presence and shared commitment.

Nowhere is this dedication more evident than in our work to end polio. Last month, I asked you to reflect on your club’s role in this historic effort, and many of you responded with renewed energy and generosity.

Polio cases are down more than 99 percent since Rotary began this fight, a testament to the health workers, volunteers, and members who kept vaccinating children through wars, border closures, and every imaginable obstacle. They didn’t know how the story would end. They knew who they were, and they kept going.

That is our inspiration in this moment. When the ground feels unsteady, Rotary becomes the stable ground. When plans shift, we are the partner who responds. When the path forward is unclear, our strength of self becomes our compass.

By the time you read this, I will be in a place that has tested my own footing. I’ll share the full story online, and it’s one you won’t want to miss.

Let us continue being an organization the world can count on. We may not always know how every challenge will be solved. But we know who we are, and that’s always been enough for us to begin. 

You can find all prior "Messages from the Foundation Trustee Chair" at this LINK