Nearly 25 years ago, Spherix Global Insights’ CEO, Jennifer Robinson, and Cheeriodicals’ CEO, Gary Parisher, met when they entered the healthcare world as sales representatives for Genzyme’s new renal division. Robinson and Parisher were both excited and fortunate to join such a well-established biotech company, especially as Genzyme launched its first product in the renal marketplace. Within just a few years, Genzyme’s novel product to treat high levels of phosphorus in dialysis patients became a market leader, improving outcomes and overall quality of life for dialysis patients worldwide.
With the remarkable growth of Genzyme’s renal division, Robinson and Parisher both had great opportunities for career growth and development, leading them to expanded roles in marketing, market research, national accounts, business development, and more. More importantly, they had both become entrenched in Genzyme’s core value of “meeting the unmet needs of patients.” Along those same lines, Genzyme understood the value in meeting ALL unmet needs for patients, not just the physiological, but psychological, family, financial, and so many more areas.
Robinson launched her first pharmaceutical market research company in 2004, has been on the Board of the American Kidney Fund for 6 years, and most recently, launched and led her company Spherix Global Insights in her second pursuit of success in market research. Robinson’s goal of providing hyper-focused insights and strategy for biotech and pharmaceutical clients grew out of her work at Genzyme. It offered a way to positively impact patients by providing relevant information so that her clients could improve the healthcare of the patients they serve.
In 2011, Parisher launched Cheeriodicals to provide a different type of impact for patients by providing corporate clients with team building activities that deliver smiles to those in need. Cheeriodicals creates team building experiences where corporate clients pack and personalize cheer-up boxes and bags with content perfectly tailored to the needs of hospitalized kids, hospitalized Veterans, Ronald McDonald House residents, frontline hospital workers and others in need of a lift in spirits. Like Robinson, Parisher realized the importance of keeping a keen eye on positively impacting patients with the launch and development of Cheeriodicals.
Fast forward to 2022, Jennifer reached out to Gary to design a team building activity for her fast growing team in Exton, PA. Her goal was to bring her company together and provide them with a shared experience to give-back to their community. After consideration of the various options, Jennifer and her team decided to pack Cheeriodicals and deliver one to every child staying at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, DE. These Cheeriodicals would be our signature bright green boxes containing toys, activity books, and more to help brighten the day of more than 200 hospitalized children.
Their team of 75 plus united around the shared purpose of giving and doing the work themselves to pack the Cheeriodicals, even personalize them with special notes of encouragement inside for the kids and their families. You can see the focus on the faces of the team as they worked on the project and the final photo with the entire team in smile mode.
Following the completion of the Cheeriodicals team building activity, Robinson and a small group from her team were able to go over to Nemours Children’s Hospital to personally assist with unloading and delivering the 200+ Cheeriodicals for the kids. The weather cooperated and made this day perfect as they were able to capture a few photos outside and in the lobby as the team unloaded the Cheeriodicals.
With the COVID constraints in place, Robinson and the team were unable to deliver the Cheeriodicals in person directly to the patients, but rest assured that more than 200 kids had a wonderful reason to smile when they received their big green boxes of cheer from the hospital’s Child Life Team.
Every delivery to a children’s hospital has one photo that leaves everyone involved in the project fully aware of the impact of the donation. In this case, this child’s reaction is exactly why this work matters so much.
Cheeriodicals has led hundreds of team building activities that lead to happiness all over the country, Canada, Mexico, and other international locations, but this one was one for the memory books. Parisher expressed after the event, “It was such a rewarding experience to reconnect with Jennifer and realize that our time at Genzyme built a desire in both of us to always make a positive impact on patients and their families.”
And yes, a final photo of Robinson and Parisher with two of the Cheeriodicals is fitting to close this chapter of the give-back story at Nemours Children’s Hospital. Until next time!
