He has served under Florida Governor Askew and with the New York Yankees, but over the past two-and-a-half decades, Doug Sessions has found the most success as President and CEO of the Ounce of Prevention Fund (preventchildabusefl.org), which works to end child abuse in Florida. His background in government made him an unlikely candidate for the position, but his overwhelming devotion to preventing child abuse in Florida makes him an obvious choice.
Doug is fluent in Floridian. However before he was fluent in Floridian, he was speaking Yankee as he served with the New York baseball team, he describes one experience with the organization, “I got a call one day from a marketing person, and she said, “I represent Miller beer, and we want to do a Miller Lite commercial with Mr. Steinbrenner and Billy Martin.” So I said, “Well, I’ll go check.” And I visited with George and he said, “I’m not really inclined to do that.” Then he started thinking, he said, “Well, are they going to pay me to do it?” And he said, “I’m sure they will.” He says, “Well, if they will take whatever they’re going to pay me and give it to this,” there was an orphanage in the Bronx. And he said, “If they will give it to,” I think it was called St. Mary’s, “I’ll talk Billy into doing it, and we’ll do it.” So I called the lady back and I said, “Here’s the deal.” And she said, “Well, that’s great. We’ll do it in a heartbeat.” And they gave, I think it was like, $50,000 to this orphanage.”
The sort of selflessness he saw while with the Yankee organization is matched by what Sessions says he learned from Governor Reubin Askew: lessons on ethics, humility, and ambition. According to Sessions, Governor Askew was once set to receive the King of Jordan at a space launch in Cape Canaveral, and not knowing how to address him at the time, simply said, “hello, king, how are you?”
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