Newsroom

Eastern Bank honors Maria Vertkin with 2017 Community Advocacy Award

Eastern Bank honors Maria Vertkin with 2017 Community Advocacy Award

CAMBRIDGE, November 16, 2017 – Eastern Bank recently honored Maria Vertkin with the bank’s 2017 Community Advocacy Award, which recognizes people who have given their time and talent to address a vital need in their community.

Vertkin, Executive Director of Found in Translation, was recognized for dedicating her professional career to social work and launching a nonprofit focused on training and job placement for low-income and homeless bilingual women.

After being awarded the Kip Tiernan Social Justice Fellowship, Vertkin, who is an immigrant and formerly homeless herself, started Found in Translation in 2011 with the hopes of providing medical interpreter training and job placement to multi-lingual women, enabling them to turn their most stigmatized characteristic—their linguistic and cultural backgrounds—into their biggest asset in the workforce.  The organization’s mission is to provide economic mobility for women using their language skills and through the work of the interpreters it trains, reducing ethnic, racial, and linguistic disparities in the health care field.

Vertkin has been named a Forbes “30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur” and was profiled in The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “40 Under 40” list.  Found in Translation has been recognized numerous times with awards such as the 2017 Roslyn S Jaffe Award, the 2015 Grinnell College Innovator for Social Justice Prize, the 2015 Richard Cornuelle Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and 2013 Echoing Green Global Fellowship.

The 2017 Community Advocacy Award is decided by a select group of Eastern Bank executives.  The award aligns with Eastern’s Targeted Grant program each year, which for 2017 the focus is supporting immigrants in our communities.

About Eastern Bank

Founded in 1818 and based in Boston, Eastern Bank is America’s oldest and largest mutual bank, with $10 billion in assets and over 120 locations serving communities in eastern Massachusetts, southern and coastal New Hampshire and Rhode Island.  Eastern provides exceptional access to fairly priced banking, investment and insurance products and services for consumers and businesses of all sizes. Eastern Bank, which includes Eastern Wealth Management and Eastern Insurance, is known for its outspoken advocacy and community support that has topped more than $100 million in charitable giving over the past 20 years.  An inclusive company, Eastern employs 1,900 deeply committed professionals who value relationships with their customers, colleagues and communities. Join us for good at www.easternbank.com.