HANCOCK, Mich. (WJMN) – As executive director of the Keweenaw Community Foundation, Robin Meneguzzo devotes most of her time towards caring for her community.

“Every aspect of Robin’s professional life is focused on bettering the lives of other people,” said John Lehman, the person who nominated her and also works with her as the Board Chair of the Keweenaw Community Foundation. “She’s trained as a nurse in healthcare profession, but here as the Executive director of the Keweenaw Community Foundation, she’s focused on bettering the lives of students through scholarships, bettering the lives of community members through work with other nonprofits in the area, and is just an absolute testament to the quality of individuals that live here in the Copper Country.”

Although she started out her professional life as a nurse, she decided to shift her focus towards helping the community in more ways than just healthcare.

“My background is, I was a family nurse practitioner,” said Meneguzzo. “I worked in the area for a long time, and one of the things that I kept seeing was I kept seeing a lot of the same challenges faced by a lot of the patients that I was seeing and a lot of those issues stem from more system or community based issues and so as I started to think a little bit more about where these issues are stemming from I thought that working in a capacity that I could be involved in some of that more system or community level. It might be a way to actually continue to improve the health of our community in different ways and so I saw the job opening here at the foundation and I applied.”

Robin has always felt connected to her community. We asked her to reflect on a moment she felt proud of the place she calls home.

“One of the things I love about this community is when there is a challenging time that we face, you do see people rise to the occasion to support their neighbors, to help each other out,” said Meneguzzo. “We played a large role after the 2018, we called it the ‘Father Day Flood’ that happened on Father’s day. It was a significant tragedy to our community and there was a huge outpouring from the community to support their neighbors, to put sandbags down, to help clean out basements, to pump out water. You know, people were working around the clock to try to help each other and the Community Foundation at that time did do a large fundraising effort to help support individuals in our community at that time. So I think that’s definitely one of the things I appreciate about our community is being able to look out for each other because we are far from a lot of places, right? So, because of where we are located, geographically, I think it also helps that we work together to support ourselves.” 

Even when she isn’t working at the Keweenaw Community Foundation, she still devoted her time to serving people in need.

Along with her work for the Community Foundation, she is also a board member at both the Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter and the Aspirus Keweenaw Hospital. She works towards being a bridge between these two organizations and her community.

“There are few things that slow Robin down and her energy and commitment to success and her spirit of generosity are, I think, the major hallmarks of how people get to know her,” said Lehman.

Making her a Remarkable Woman.