Day of Hope Speakers
The Day of Hope features three prominent speakers sharing stories about hope in their own lives.
Charlie Hewitt
Artist, The Hopeful Project
Charlie Hewitt has been working as a professional artist for more than 50 years. Born in Lewiston, Maine, he spent most of his professional life living, working, and exhibiting in NYC.
Fourteen years ago, Hewitt along with his wife and his son and daughter came back to Maine. Currently, he has a studio in Portland, ME and in Jersey City, N.J..
Charlie Hewitt describes himself as "an artist who finds interest in many mediums." He enjoys painting, printmaking and sculpture; his work has been exhibited in galleries nationally. Hewitt is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, as well as The Farnsworth, The Portland Museum, and The Ogunquit Museum here in Maine.
Recently, Hewitt has been developing The Hopeful Project, a large scale retro Marquee sign that's been placed on buildings throughout Maine, in Portland, Lewiston, Augusta, Bangor, and in Rumford this coming month.
The Hopeful message as an art installation has spread down the East coast to New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland; there are inquiries to place a Hopeful in 3 more locations in Maine as well upstate N.Y., Boston and Las Vegas. There have been large electronic Highway billboards in NYC , Newark N.J., Philadelphia as well as Brussels and Paris.
Kate O’Halloran
Executive Director, Lifeflight Foundation
Kate O’Halloran was appointed the executive director of the LifeFlight Foundation in September 2020. Kate grew up in Waterville, Maine, and attended Brown University, where she earned a dual degree in economics and organizational behavior & management and played varsity ice hockey. After Brown, Kate worked in Boston for 15 years, including earning her MBA from Babson, where she went on to become the associate director of The Blank Center for Entrepreneurship and enrolled in a Ph.D program for educational leadership at Boston College. O’Halloran returned to Maine in 2003 to be closer to family and to enjoy the state’s natural resources. While in Maine, O’Halloran has also served as the associate director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College, the director of major and planned gifts for MaineGeneral Health, and the director of Development and Alumni Connections at Carrabassett Valley Academy. She also spent three years as the vice president of the Rolfson Group, where she worked with clients across the nonprofit sector. Currently she serves as a corporator for Kennebec Savings Bank and on the Board of the Maine Association of Non-Profits.
Bill Cyr
Chief Operating Officer, LifeFlight Maine
Bill Cyr was appointed as chief operating officer for LifeFlight of Maine in May 2021. Bill became involved in EMS in high school and received his EMT certification at age 16. He knew he wanted to remain in transport medicine and nursing school was the path to that goal. Cyr’s first opportunity to join the flight nursing ranks came when he was hired by UMass LifeFlight in Worcester, Massachusetts. He moved to Boston Medflight 10 years later, where he worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming the Chief Operations Manager. In 2018 he had the opportunity to move to Denver, Colorado, to help reorganize and expand the Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Neo/Peds transport program as the chief flight nurse/program director. Cyr also sits on the board of directors for the Air and Surface Transport Nurses Association and has a master’s degree in healthcare management and informatics from the University of Massachusetts.
Julie Forsyth
Chief Operations Officer, Partners for World Health
A Portland native, Julie lived “away” for 30 years, returning six years ago. She received her MBA from Boston University and her BA from Harvard College. She lives in Portland with her husband, Matthew, and their two children. Julie comes to Partners for World Health with more than twenty-five years of experience developing, marketing, running, and optimizing brands for a wide variety of companies, and contributing to the communities in which she has lived.