Business Innovators Radio - The Inspired Impact Podcast with Judy Carlson-Interview with Cindy Markham, International President, Sertoma International

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

I grew up in Canada and moved to the United States in 1990 when my husband was transferred here with Great West Life. I was unable to work at the time and turned to volunteering in many different roles over the years. In late 2011, I learned about Sertoma while golfing, and this organization has impacted my life ever since. I was instrumental in forming the SouthGlenn Sertoma Club in 2012 and have been an active member ever since. I held many positions in my local club and served in several roles at the National level. These include Governor, Director at Large, Vice President, President Elect, and currently International President.I am married with two grown children living here in Colorado, and my family is incredibly supportive of all my work with Sertoma.https://www.sertoma.org/ **********************************************************Judy Carlson is the CEO and Founder of the Judy Carlson Financial Group, where she helps couples create personalized, coordinated financial plans that support the life they want to live – now and in the future.As an Independent Fiduciary and Comprehensive Financial Planner, Judy specializes in retirement income and wealth decumulation strategies. She is a CPA, Investment Advisor Representative, licensed in life and health insurance, and certified in long-term care planning.Judy’s mission is to help guide clients with clarity and care, building financial plans that focus on real planning built around real lives.Learn More: https://judycarlson.com/Investment Adviser Representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management, LLC, a SEC Registered Adviser.The Inspired Impact Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-inspired-impact-podcast-with-judy-carlson-interview-with-cindy-markham-international-president-sertoma-international

Welcome to the Inspired Impact Podcast, where dedicated female professionals share how they inspire impact every day. Authentic stories, passionate commitment, lives transformed. I'm your host, Judy Carlson. Welcome to today's episode of the Inspired Impact Podcast. Today, I get to welcome a very special guest to the podcast. She's the global president of Sertoma International, a nonprofit that serves people with hearing loss throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Cindy Markham, welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you very much, Judy. I appreciate you having me today. I can't wait to hear your story. Where do you want to start to tell us how you got to where you are today? Well, I won't go back to kindergarten. But I will go back to actually 1990 is kind of when things started for me. Big change happened in my life in 1990.

I was living in Canada and my husband was transferred to the United States. And so we moved into Colorado. And at the time, my husband came down on a work visa and I was not working. And so I had to apply for a green card. So I couldn't work anywhere. And so didn't have any kids yet and was looking for something to do and just was in the public library one day and came across a flyer for volunteering. Now, it was at a battered women's shelter. And so that's where I started volunteering.

Had really not done a whole lot of volunteering in my life before that. I was pretty young, 27 at the time. But just kind of fell in love with volunteering. And so fast forward a bunch of years and a bunch of different volunteer opportunities, I was at the point where I was looking for something new to do. And I happened to be serving on the board of directors at a local golf club, the South Glen Country Club. And I was on the first T-box. And a gentleman came up to me and said, hey, do you want to play, can I play golf with you? I said, sure.

Okay, I'll play golf with you. Well, by the time we had completed nine holes, I'd heard all about this new organization that I had no idea what it was about called Sertoma. And he told me all about what the local clubs did, how they functioned, how they did fundraisers. And it was all to support people who were impacted or affected by hearing loss in one form or another, whether they needed hearing aids, cochlear implants. Deaf kids going to camp. All of that sort of stuff is what they worked on. And I was really intrigued by it. And so he invited me to an event that his local club was working in.

And it was the Western Welcome Week here in Centennial, Colorado. And so I said, well, what's your job? And he said, we're cleaning up. And I said, what do you mean you're cleaning up? And he said, well, they have this great event where everybody comes in. and they have tastings from all these different restaurants and bars. And then we show up at the end of the event and we clean it up. And I thought to myself, wow, this is an interesting organization.

They come in and clean up after somebody else has a really fun event. But I went. I went. My husband and I went. And I volunteered and helped them clean up at the end of the event. And what stuck with me was that these were really great people. and they were so focused on just cleaning up the event. They weren't focused on eating there, drinking there, having a good time. They were focused on cleaning up after the event.

So they just struck me as very kind, generous souls. And so I started attending meetings. There are several different clubs in the local area. There's actually seven in this part of Colorado in the Denver kind of area. And so I started visiting the other clubs, just kind of learning a little bit about what they and what they do. And I had this brainstorm, because I was on the board of directors at the country club, I thought, what a great place for a new Sertoma Club.

But let's talk about forming a new Sertoma Club. So in 2012, fast forward to 2012, I helped form the Sertoma, the South Glen Sertoma Club, one of the founding members. And we had about 23 members at the time. And so our mission, mission of Sertoma, is basically to just improve the quality of life of those who are affected by hearing loss. That's what the mission is. And we do that in two ways, through education and through service. So the education piece of it is going out to visit local corporations, local organizations,

moms groups, church groups, anybody that wants to learn about hearing loss and how to help with people with hearing loss. And our service basically comes through fundraising. We do all kinds of different fundraising events and our proceeds from those fundraising events go directly back into the community to help anybody with hearing loss.

That being said, It's not just about hearing loss. We also work with Special Olympics. We work with a lot of local organizations, food for thought, all different kinds of organizations locally. Hearing is our main focus, but we also support all kinds of other organizations. So I started in the club and I've gone through all the ranks of the club. I was the president, the secretary, the social director, all of those sorts of things. only thing I did not work on was was the treasurer because if you ask my husband, managing a checkbook

is not one of my strength. So I did everything except that job, but I did do all of those jobs. And very shortly in my tenure as a Sertoman, I was approached by the governor of Sertoma, of the district in Colorado. And he said, Cindy, you know, you need to be the next governor of Sertoma. And I said, I've only been in Sertoma for a couple years. Why me? And he looked to me straight in the eye and said, why not you? Oh, wow. And those words have stuck with me ever since, ever since. And that was probably in 2014 when I spoke with him about that. In addition, one of the ladies from the very first group that I met at that Western Welcome Week event, looked me straight in the eye and said to me, you're going to go places. I see you going places in Sertoma.

And I just spoke with her the other day as a matter of fact. And I said, Pat, remember your words that you spoke to me? And she said, I do. I told you you were going to go places. And so I did a couple of stints as the governor. Okay. And then I moved into the international board. Again, I sat on the board as an international director at large.

Okay. And at the time, we had about 10 board directors on the national board. And so I was one of the directors on the national board. That was a three-year skint that I spent in that role. And then again, I was approached by a woman who was actually the president of Sertoma at the time. Her name is Gretchen Nielsen. And we were at a convention. And she sat me down at a table and said, Cindy, I want to talk to you about. something and I said what? And she said, you are going to be done as director at large at the end of this year. And I said, you are correct. And she said, I think you should run for president. Wow. And again, I said, why me? And she said, why not you? And so it's kind of like the people keep saying the same thing to me over and over and over again. And my response to her at the time was, well, you know, I got out with my husband about that because this is a bigger role for me to take on. And again, the role of president is a three-year, three-year role. You start off in the first year as the

vice president. Okay. And then in your second year, you are president-elect. Okay. And in your third year, you take on the role of president. So the first two years is really kind of a prep time for you to, you know, become acquainted with the current presidents, find out what they're doing, figure out how they work. And then in your third year, in your year as president, you take over and make it all your own. So I have my own goals about what I want to do this year and how I want to move the organization forward. And each president takes on their own ideas about how they want to move the organization forward. So for me, my main goal this year, you know, most nonprofits currently are suffering from the

same problem. They're losing members. Membership is going down. You know, I sometimes hear things like, well, young people don't want to be involved in service organizations. I'm not sure they don't want to be involved. I think they want to be involved differently. Oh, gotcha.

I have two girls, 27 and 32. And they want to be involved. They want to come to everything that my club does. They don't want to sit in on meetings and come for dinner after they've worked for a whole day and sit in on a meeting. So my plan for this year is really to talk about planting seeds with younger people. Yeah. And having them get involved, invite them to events. and then maybe once they've attended a few events,

invite them to help us plan an event. And then at some point in their life, I think when their kids are grown and they have more time and they have more money, quite frankly, that they're going to be willing to jump into that kind of organization. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. Wow, that is very insightful and powerful.

Cindy. I don't think, at least from my perspective, many nonprofits have figured that out. You know, it's funny because every time I attend a meeting, I get the same question. And it's like, how do we get young people involved with us? And one of my responses in the past has been, well, you know, you guys are a group of and, you know, forgive me, but they're typically older. And I was, I remember I was speaking with one group that was all men. And I think the youngest person in the room was 65. And I said, think about this, guys. You've got to be able to read your audience. And I don't know a lot of 27 and 30-year-olds that are going to want to come for lunch every week and sit down and listen to you guys talk about, you know, the things that you've done over the years and how great things were in the past.

They want to look to the future and they want to become involved in stuff. So I say, you know, you got to figure out how to get them interested in you guys and work with you, and then maybe they'll come back when they have the time like you guys have now. And it's interesting you mentioned too to get the younger people first to go to the events and then help plan the events. And from their perspective, the events that they want to plan are not going to be the same events that 65-year-old men and women are going to want to plan. That's exactly correct.

Exactly correct. And I'll give you an example. My 27-year-old daughter just got married. And she has been to our October Fest Cornhole tournament event for the last couple of years. And last year, her and her now husband both came to me afterwards and they're like, mom, okay, you need to fix this. You need to change this. and add this and add that. And I just looked at them and I said, well, why don't you guys be part of my committee?

And they said, absolutely, we'll do that. So they are now involved with helping me organize the event for this year. So, you know, getting them involved, getting them to give the time that they do have, even if it's a little bit of time, it's a good thing. And I've always said, you know, every time I've talked to a prospective new Sir Tomin, you know, they're like, well, what are your time recording? What are your monetary requirements? What are the requirements to join your organization? And my response is, can you give us 100 hours a week? No. Okay. Can you give us 50 hours a week? No. And I say, that's okay. Can you give us 20 hours a week? No. Can you give us one hour a week? Yeah, I can do that. Then we'll take you. So I always say whatever you can give will take because it's going to build on itself. over time. You start out small. Everything starts with small baby steps and we grow into something

much bigger. Right. You mentioned that, I made a note here. Let me just pull it up. So when you raise money to help the hearing impaired, how do you find the hearing impaired that you help? You know, we research, research all different kinds of organizations. Some of them have been around for a long time with Sertoma. Oh. There is, like our local club, for example, participates in a field of dreams baseball camp. And it has been around for 26 years in the Denver metro area. Okay. And so we jumped on board with that. We jumped on board with raising money for that organization and volunteering for their organization. We had a woman reach out to our club in particular.

She runs a pony camp for deaf and hard of hearing kids. It's called Rosie's Ranch, and it's in Parker, Colorado. And she reached out to us and asked us if there was something we could do to help her. And in the end, her and her husband both joined our club. So they're now members of our circumstances. Toma Club and we in turn give money to Rosie's Ranch. We show up at their, they're fix up the ranch days and clean up in the springtime. We provide food and volunteers when they have a picnic for deaf and hard of hearing families. So a lot of time it's kind of a go between of us reaching out

to organizations and organizations reaching out to us. Wow. So what's the tie or is there a tie to audiologists who diagnose people with significant hearing impairment? Well, most of the Sertoma groups locally have an audiologist that they work with. And anybody that those audiologists get in their business, if they're, for example, need help with funding a hearing aid, they'll reach out to us and let us know that they have somebody who is in desperate need of hearing aids. can we help fund some of that stuff? There is also a local club that does a, they call it a here to work program.

Okay. And so they work specifically with an organ, with an audiologist. Okay. The audiologist will do an intake for somebody who needs hearing aids to perform their job, but can't afford those hearing aids for their job. They will work with that person,

send them back to this program, the Sertoma Promotion Club is what they're called. Okay. And the Here to Work program in their club. Now, my club, specifically, the Southland Sertoma Club, we are working with that program currently. Oh, wow. We have a lady who is the general manager of a club, and she has no health insurance, no health

insurance whatsoever. She has significant hearing loss and has had hearing aids since, I think she was five or six years old. is in desperate need of new hearing aids, can't afford them. So our club has referred her to the Here to Work program. We've set aside $2,000 to help offset the cost of those hearing aids. So we will help her get hearing aids so that she can do her job. Wow.

I know of someone who's had hearing aids for years, and I don't understand all of what goes into it, but they're at the maximum amount that they can help her hear. And it's still to the point where she can't have a phone conversation because she can't hear the person on the other end of the line. Wow. And I don't know what, you know, what's next for her. And I'm sure I don't know what's next either physically for her hearing or financially.

Sure. I just don't know. Yeah. I'm not familiar with, you know, the steps of all of that. I wonder cochlear is an option for her, a cochlear implant. Right. And that's something we can help with. We wouldn't be able to afford the whole thing. You know, it's a lot of money. But we could certainly help with a donation, you know, that would help her get to that surgery or whatever it is that she needs next.

We can provide funds for that. And then I've read a lot, too, about, and my audiologist as well that I had on the podcast, Dr. Julie Link gave me a lot of educational material about the importance of catching hearing loss early and getting you hearing because it's such a direct connection to potential. dementia later in life. Absolutely. And one of our biggest programs is safe ears, where we will actually go to schools, you know, groups with younger kids and hand out a little bookmark that talks all about where they should be protecting their hearing, not putting AirPods in your ears, you know, 24-7. If you're going to a monster truck show, make sure you've got some headphones.

on. And then we hand out, we give out earplugs to all of all of the kids in the program. As a matter of fact, we just did one this year at my golf club. They have a swim team. And so we held a day when they were registering for swim team. We handed out earplugs and the bookmark to all of the kids that were registering for the swim team. So that's another big piece of our education is to make sure that people are aware that you've got to protect that hearing. You go to a concert. gosh, put something in your ears because you're still going to be able to hear the music, even if you have the ear plugs in and protect your hearing. My neighbors both have hearing aids, and they said it's because their whole lives,

they've gone to concerts. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and they're in their late 60s, so it's like they've got maybe 30 years left to live, but the implications of those decisions for 30 years make a difference later. as we start to age. Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's even getting more critical now because our kids have stuff in their ears all the time.

They're constantly listening to something and they have the either headphones or AirPods in their ears all the time. So it's a real education process for a lot of kids. And a lot of adults, you know. I mean, you get on it, I was just on an airplane this past weekend. I actually went to Mexico to visit with. the 13 Mexico clubs. They were having their national convention.

And so they invited me down. But, you know, on the airplane, like every person on this airplane has AirPods in their ears and are listening for two hours to, you know, pretty loud music and things like that. So it's just an awareness and making sure that people are aware of not constantly having that in your ears. Interesting. You mentioned that now that I'm thinking like the gal who I went to. for a massage, she had something in her ears because it's quiet in there.

And there's really, I mean, no conversation unless you initiate it. So maybe for her, I don't know if she's listening to music or a podcast or whatever. And then I was at the dentist this week. And my hygienist had something in her ears as well. maybe they were to protect against noise, but maybe not. It's not super noisy to clean someone's teeth. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. You know what's really interesting, Judy, is there's an app you can put on your phone. Okay. And it will record what the decibel level is. Okay. So I pull it out a lot when I'm at a concert, when I'm at a hockey game, when I'm at a football game, all of those different things. And I look at it and go, wow, I had no.

no idea this was this noisy. Right. So it really gives you a much more increased awareness of how noisy our world is. Yeah, there's a chart at my audiologist that shows not just the decibels, but the duration. Yes. So like I turn my blender on every morning to make my shake, but it's not even 90 seconds, 49 seconds. Exactly. And I walk away from it now so that I am cognizant of it.

And in restaurants, I don't know. She's talked to me about it. I ask for a quieter place to sit just so I can hear everything. And I don't even have a hearing. I don't have hearing loss yet. Maybe I will down the road, but not yet. But I learn so much. Yeah.

It's amazing. You know, once it's gone, you know, it's not replaceable. Once those little hairs in your ears are down, you can't lift them back up again. So it's all about protecting, protecting your hearing when you're young. Right. And it's like she said, you know, if our eyes are bad and we can't see someone's going to take us to an eye doctor and our teeth are regularly cleaned and tended to, but the ears are often forgotten. Absolutely. And, you know, for a lot of people, too, and I get it, it's a vanity thing, right? You know, with the big thing on your ear. And my mom, for example, for years, would absolutely refuse to do anything about her hearing. And I remember she was visiting me and we were in Target and she was checking out and the gal was talking to her and my mom did not hear a word she said. And she kind of, the girl kind of looked at me and I just kind of went like this.

this like she can't hear you. And I said to my mom after, mom, you know, you really need to be working on this because that girl was talking to you and you did not hear a word that she said. And I said, I'm guessing you miss a lot more conversations than just that whole day. And at that point, she finally did. But I remember her saying, oh, I don't want that big ugly thing behind my ear. And, you know, there's a whole lot of new technology right now that is really, really good. Right. There's some new technology now that you can have a transcript right on your cell phone of what's coming into your ear. You can set it up on Wi-Fi on your phone and there's a transcript that will show up on your phone.

Wow. It's amazing. It's amazing some of the technology that's coming through. Wow. Yeah. And it's funny because the newer technology, it's this tiny little wire that goes around your ear and then you can barely see that it goes. into your ear. And beyond that, if you have hair at all, you don't see something behind your ear. Yes. Yes. And honestly, that is helping a lot because more people are willing to do it now

because people can't see it. You know, I mean, I got to be honest with you, I am supposed to wear reading glasses, and I'm so vain that I don't like to have my glasses on, and I only wear them when I'm doing things like this or reading in the grocery store. I don't have to wear them when I'm driving. So I take them off when I'm driving because I don't like to wear them. I hear you on that. That is so amazing. So you're still in a local club. Is that right? You told me the name of the South, was it South Glen? South Glen Club. And is that the one you started at the golf club? It is. Okay. It is.

Yep. And so tell me a little bit more about a person who might be interested in visiting or joining or coming to learn more about a local club. Okay. Well, you can find out all of the information about Sertoma on the Sertoma.org website. Okay. It will tell you everything about our mission, our purpose, all of those sorts of things. And there is actually a search engine in there where you can click on, you can type in your

zip code, more city, and it will pull up all the clubs that are local to you. Okay. Recently, we actually had a person reach out to the national organization and said, I'm in Colorado. I heard about this organization called Sir Toma. How do I get involved? And so I got an email from the national organization. And I reached out to the person and I said, well, where, you know, give me some,

give me some information about you. Where are you located so I can set you up with a club that's local to you? you. What time works for you? Do you work full-time? Are you available to go to a noon meeting? Are you available for an evening meeting? A breakfast meeting? Are there certain days of the week? Because all of our seven local clubs meet at different times, different days, and different locations. What I also encourage, what we also encourage people to do is to visit more than one club. Because you may walk into one club and go, oh, you know, these guys just don't click with me. And, you know, and you know, these guys just don't click with me.

And then go to another club and go, wow, I really made a connection with that lady. And maybe that's the club that I want to be a part of. So we truly encourage people to try to look at different clubs and find the one that mostly speaks to you. If I remember correctly, a couple years ago, there was a young man. He was in his mid-20s. And it was interesting because his girlfriend actually knew my daughter. And he had reached out to me and said, I heard about Sertoma. He was a financial planner.

And so he wanted to reach out to a Sertoma club. And I had suggested two or three different clubs. And at the time, I was like, oh, you know, maybe come join my club because we're looking for new members. And as it turned out, my club met at noon. And that didn't work for him. So I said, here's a club that meets for breakfast. Here's another club that meets in the evening.

Why don't you try those two clubs and see if either of those work for you? and he ended up joining the club that met in the morning. Okay. He still came and actually volunteered at our golf tournament because he liked what we did, but he liked what time they met. Sure. So we have that crossover between clubs locally

because we're so close together that we're able to do that. Sure. So we'll always try to find the specific location, time, and date that will work for that person. Also, what their clubs do. You know, there are, there are a lot of clubs that do golf tournaments. Somebody might not be interested in doing a golf tournament,

but they might be much more interested in doing a baseball camp. Oh, well, let's send them over to a camp or to a club that focuses on a baseball camp as their big fundraiser, those sorts of things. And then the seven presidents, do they get together? Or how does that work? Or is that the governor or how does that work? Well, we don't have governors anymore. they did away with the governors.

We currently have a regional director. Okay. The regional director for the region that I'm in, the Mountain West region, covers Colorado, Utah, California, Arizona. I think the Seattle clubs are up in our region as well, as well as Alaska. And so that's all part of the Mountain West. region. So we have one regional director that takes care of that region. Locally, our seven clubs, because we're so close together, you know, we have one in Centennial,

we have one in Lakewood, we have one in Arapaho County. Because we're so close together, we actually get together once a quarter, once every two months, excuse me. And we just exchange ideas. We talk about what we're doing and see if anybody wants to help us out. with our event that we're running. So we work very closely together. In some of the other areas, like Alaska, has two clubs. Okay. And that's it. And they're farther apart. So they don't necessarily talk to one another. The regional director will have a meeting once a month with all of his clubs, with all of the clubs in his region, and talk to them. Sometimes a regional director will make a newsletter and send that out locally. So we try to talk with one another. But we have,

we're very blessed in Colorado that we have so many clubs so close together locally. Right. That we're able to do that. And there's no conflict or overlap with the organizations that you support because you're all together in one sort of group from that standpoint. Exactly. Exactly. We're all, we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all, we're all trying to do fundraisers and the money's all going to go to a good cause anyways. So if we're doing, if we're doing a dinner and another club is going to do a dinner, it's fine. We'll try to go to each other's dinners, but we don't, you know, it's not a conflict. It's not a source of conflict. Sure. Wow, we've covered a lot of ground, Cindy. This has been fun. I enjoyed this a lot.

So people interested would go to certoma.org website and start poking around and looking at different options and seeing what they might be interested in. Yep. Just plug in your zip code and it will pop out the local clubs and all of our information will be on there as well. You can reach out to the local president and they'll invite you to a meeting and just come and check us out and see what we're all about. And if it fits with, if it lands on your heart, I always like to say if it lands on

your heart, it's going to be a good thing. Yeah. And, you know, honestly, one of the things that was the most impactful to me was watching the videos of kids being fitted for hearing aids for the first time in hearing their mom's voice for the first time. Or a teenager, you know, getting fitted for a hearing aid and all of a sudden being able to hear their mom or their teacher or things like that. The videos are so impactful. And it seems like such an easy thing to make such a big difference. Right. And I'm sure when that happens, then the verbal skills come right along behind all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine going through your whole life, not being able to hear anything and having to see people's faces so you can read lips. And then all of a sudden, there's all this noise from birds and, you know, just everything. It's truly an awesome experience to watch some of those videos. Yeah. That's powerful. Well, thank you so much for joining us here today and sharing your story. This has just been delightful, Cindy.

Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it so very much. Anytime I can talk about Sertoma, I'm happy to do so. Okay, good. Well, thank you. You are welcome. Thanks so much for joining us for the Inspired Impact Podcast.

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