Meet the volunteers who power Mastercard’s Red Cross partnership

About 30 years ago on a cold day in December, a fire tore through Carl Peterson’s apartment in Mount Vernon, New York. 

“It was devastating, just unexpected,” he recalls. “You have all these different thoughts going through your head. You don't know exactly what to do, how to recover, what the next steps are.” 

Among the people responding to the scene were American Red Cross volunteers. They helped Peterson reach those next steps and start to get his life back together. 

Decades later, he recalls that fire as his motivation for becoming a Red Cross volunteer, knowing how valuable it was for him to have that support. He now responds to fires and other emergencies all around Westchester and Rockland counties and Greenwich, Connecticut, as part of a local Disaster Action Team. 

Peterson, who has worked in corporate security at Mastercard for 28 years, is one of the many employees at the company who are active Red Cross volunteers. Their work, and Mastercard’s corporate giving and support for decades, were recognized last week during the Red Cross’ annual Heroes Gala in Manhattan. CEO Michael Miebach accepted the Corporate Leadership Award on behalf of the company.  

Mastercard's partnership with the Red Cross runs deep. The company uses its payments network to support public donation drives and to provide emergency financial assistance to people affected by disasters. Over many years, employees have worked closely with the nonprofit to run blood drives and install smoke alarms. 

Mastercard is also the first company in the U.S. to work with the Red Cross to train employees before an emergency happens, teaching them about the many scenarios they could face and skills they’ll need at a disaster site. Before these training programs were created, volunteers would go to a site and get trained there, delaying their volunteer work. 

Since these programs started in 2019, Mastercard and the Red Cross have trained 400 Mastercard employees. Small groups of them have deployed to Kentucky, Florida and Texas in recent years. 

The reasons why employees wanted to go through this program often varied. Peterson did so he could contribute to his local community. Christy Corrington, an executive assistant in St. Louis, wanted to do more volunteer work after she became an empty nester. 

Corrington now helps coordinate blood drives at Mastercard’s St. Louis tech hub and in her community, and joined a local Disaster Action Team to respond to fires. She was also one of 10 Mastercard employees who went to Kentucky in January 2022 to support the Red Cross response after tornadoes hit communities across the state. 

She was stationed at a church, where she helped run a donation center, helping people get clothing and other supplies. The stories she heard from people stopping by were all different – some described how they narrowly avoided calamity without any injuries, others talked about losing their homes. The outpouring from the community was overwhelming – many locals arrived at the church looking for ways to help their neighbors. 

“It was heart-breaking, heart-warming and physically draining all in the same week,” she says. 

Raina Kadavil, who works at Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth in New York, took the Red Cross training so she could do more outreach, especially for refugees. She runs a nonprofit called Urban Refuge, which connects refugees all over the world to local resources. 

In September 2021, she joined a Mastercard team that went to Fort Bliss, Texas, to help Afghan refugees with their resettlement in the U.S. There, she helped run a small shoe donation center. She remembers finding pairs of dinosaur-themed Crocs for two brothers one day – the two were thrilled to get them. 

“That was just a simple, small kindness that we were able to give people,” Kadavil adds. 

She also talked about going to Florida after Hurricane Ian in 2022. She was stationed in the Hertz Arena, where many were displaced, and spent time doing people’s laundry and walking their dogs. The work wasn’t glamorous but that wasn’t the point – she said she was just there to provide people “that minimum level of comfort.” 

Each year, a new set of about 100 more employees go through the disaster relief training programs, said Susan Warner, who helps manage the programs as well as Mastercard’s Red Cross partnership. Those trainees then will join the hundreds of other Mastercard workers all over the U.S. who could be called upon when needed. 

Peterson’s volunteer work led him to become a Red Cross supervisor at local emergency sites. He’s on call on weekends from noon to 6 p.m., ready to head out at a moment’s notice. 

“It's all about helping those individuals,” he says, “because when you get on the scenes of these situations, people are distraught, they're confused. They don't know what to do. And that's where we come in and we give them that reassurance that although you just went through a traumatic event, there are resources available to help you recover and we're here to help you in that recovery.”

Banner image: In 2021, Mastercard volunteers flew to Fort Bliss in Texas to assist with aid distribution, clinic support and on-the-ground operations for resettlement efforts for Afghani refugees.