The Spirit of the LinkedIn Community: Helping in the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

I’ve lived in New York all my life. I’ve never experienced a storm as devastating as Hurricane Sandy. Despite the difficult aftermath, I’ve seen an incredible level of generosity and kindness that I’ve never seen before. I’m especially inspired by the efforts of my colleagues as they’ve taken the initiative to help those who were hit hardest by the storm. It is times like these that make me so proud to work for LinkedIn.

A few days after the storm, I sent an email to our New York office to encourage my colleagues to take some company time and volunteer to help those in need. I was fully supported by LinkedIn leaders, who were happy to see the NYC team remove themselves from emails and computers for the day to help their neighbors. Soon after, the stories came pouring in from employees who were helping out all over New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Below are just a few highlights:

•  I personally spent this past weekend helping to clean up and rebuild Gerritsen Beach where 6-8 feet of flood waters caused severe damage to nearly every house in the community
• Ashley Terrill volunteered with Pedal Brooklyn to deliver food, water, and medical assistance by bicycle to the disabled and elderly living in the projects.
• Scott Lowry made hot food and delivered it to the hard-hit Rockaways
• Tabitha Eade donated blood and led a team to drop off supplies in the Lower East Side
• Michelle Sklar Levin joined a group of marathoners to deliver supplies and volunteer her time in Staten Island

Our leaders and members have also stepped up to help. When the storm hit, thousands of children were left homeless in New Jersey, and Covenant House has set up temporary emergency shelters to house them. Our leaders are matching up to $100k in donations to Covenant House to support their life-saving work. Our generous LinkedIn members have donated over $81k so far. You can still double your impact when you donate today.

For my colleagues who were impacted by the storm, LinkedIn took care of them by offering lump sum payments to anyone who lost property or was displaced.

The past few weeks have been a humbling experience for us all. I will leave you with something my colleague Ashley Terrill said: “The one thing I learned through this experience is that you just have to get up and take control of the situation because in this chaos, no one has time to direct you on how to help.”

Now, this is the spirit of the LinkedIn community.