Andi Saylor, New Membership Co-Chair, “Feels a Need to Give Back”
In addition to serving on two boards as treasurer and recently being named a YWCA of Greater Cincinnati Rising Star, Andi Saylor is a full-time trust administrator, Impact 100’s new Membership Co-Chair and a second-year member of Impact 100’s Young Philanthropist Program.
So, what does she do in her fairly infrequent free time?
“Well, I volunteer,” answers the vivacious 28-year-old without hesitation. “I volunteer for a lot of different organizations. I’m just a go-go-go person, and I’m always volunteering and looking for new activities.”
Andi’s outlook — fortified by a deep personal and family history of community service, education and volunteerism — aptly describes her rapid rise to an important role in Impact 100’s outreach and engagement with member-donors.
She credits a range of life experiences — from her involvement with the Clark Montessori School steel drum band to her politically active, world-traveler grandparents, to dedicated teachers and the supportive environment at Mount St. Joseph University (“the Mount”) — for driving home the importance of philanthropy and its power to improve individual lives and support robust communities.
Family, volunteerism and a world view
“The roots I’ve built here at Impact 100 didn’t start two or three years ago,” she says. “They started 20 years ago with my family.”
Her father, Joey Saylor, served as Director of Development for the Greater Cincinnati Foundation from 2006-2012, giving her early childhood exposure to the importance of community-funded initiatives and volunteerism. Her mother, Dr. Laura Saylor, is Dean of Education and an education professor at the Mount, and a dedicated advocate for education and active engagement in the community.
“I remember being 16 or 17 years old and hearing my dad talk about Impact 100,” says Andi. “And even though the Mount wasn’t my initial choice for college, I’m so grateful that I went there. The Mount aligns with my childhood values of growing up Catholic, and my professors in college were able to challenge me because they really knew me.”
She graduated in 2018 with a degree in sociology, followed by a 2022 degree from Northern Kentucky University College of Law. Since 2022, she has worked as a portfolio and trust administrator for PNC Bank in downtown Cincinnati, after spending her college years as a clerk and intern for various local law firms, the Butler County Court of Common Pleas, and the Kentucky Innocence Project.
Andi cites key experiences and influences from her formative years for fueling her passion for volunteerism, including:
- Traveling to New York City with the Clark Montessori steel drum band, where band members visited a school for children with visual/hearing impairments, and slept at night on the gym floor. During the day, students enthusiastically engaged with the musicians and manipulated the vibrations and sounds of the steel drums.
- Listening to her grandparents’ stories of their drastically different lives and experiences in foreign countries, when her grandfather built radio towers in India, the Philippines, and throughout Asia and South America.
- Engaging in service-related credits at the Mount, which awarded travel scholarships for students who volunteered 150 hours a semester.
“During college, while everyone else was going to Florida on spring break, I was going to D.C. to volunteer or get involved in various community organizations,” she says. “Any itch for public service and interest in my community blossomed at Clark, and my years at the Mount just catapulted my commitment to volunteerism.”
On the Rise at Impact 100
Andi dove headfirst into Impact 100 opportunities from day one.
“I kind of ‘snowballed at Impact 100,” she says. “At first, I was trying to go to everything I could, and my involvement evolved from those early experiences. From the start, I worked with the letter-of-intent (LOI) and application process. Then I joined a Grant Review Team, and because of my financial background and my current job in a bank, I also engaged with the financial review team and helped coordinate some of the site visits to nonprofit applicants to move the process farther.”
Andi recognizes the importance that family involvement, values and lived experiences have played in shaping her current career and community path.
“I have had a lot of blessings and I’m very privileged and secure in where I am and who I am, and I recognize that,” she says with humility. “My parents have definitely led the way to service, and my mom’s involvement in education has been very transformative. But I also know that there are people, individuals, neighbors in my community, complete strangers who don’t have the same access and resources that I have. Everybody’s a human, and that is very important to me. There’s something in me that just feels a need to give back.”