Hope Magazine, March 2004

Ambassador at Large
Californian Nancy Rivard has found a way to help needy children a world away 

In 1982, Nancy Rivard believed she had found success. She had graduated from SMU and was climbing the corporate ladder as an American Airlines flight attendant supervisor. Then something happened. “My father died on Christmas Eve,” says Rivard, fifty-one, who lives in San Francisco. “He was only fifty-four. That made me stop and reevaluate life and where I was going.”

Rivard looked at her priorities and took a step backward professionally. “I went back to work as a flight attendant so I could have more time to pursue what was important to me,” she says. She used that time – and her airline flight benefits – to travel. “I visited Thailand, the former U.S.S.R., and Sri Lanka.” It was on a seven year spiritual search researching miraculous phenomena.

“I finally figured out that in order to feel fulfilled, I had to find a way to give back to others, but I didn’t know how to do that,” she says. Rivard asked herself how could one woman do anything to change the world? She wasn’t rich or glamorous, but she did have one powerful resource—her flight benefits. “I saw that my profession gave me direct access to help people all over the world.”  She decided that she could hand-deliver donated supplies to places in need.

Then Rivard decided to take her idea a step further. Would others in the travel industry like to do the same? When she approached her company CEO with the idea, she received a lukewarm response. Discouraged, she “asked God, ‘What do I do now? How am I to change the travel industry, one of the largest industries in the world? I’m just a flight attendant?’”

The answer soon became clear: “Just do it! Bring one jacket to one orphan, volunteer your time to bring food to the hungry, blankets to the cold. Just begin,” says Rivard. 

So in 1993, Nancy went alone on the first Airline Ambassadors mission of mercy. Soon others in the industry saw Rivard’s use of her time off to deliver medical supplies to a hospital in Bolivia, bring extra food to an orphanage in Ecuador and help earthquake victims in Mexico. “More and more people asked me what I was doing and they’d want to get involved themselves,” she says.

Interest grew so much that Airline Ambassadors incorporated as a non-profit in 1996, with hundreds of airline professionals from many different companies now involved. “Some in the airline industry who can’t go themselves donate their flight benefits to those who have the time to go,” says Rivard.

During the last five years, Airline Ambassadors have escorted 600-700 children to their new adoptive parents, hand-delivered over ten million dollars of aid, and volunteered their time in projects around the world.

“I believe there is a growing public that wants to make a difference in the world, but most people just don’t know how,” says Rivard, who also coordinates Mercy Missions to places in need. In July, she filled a donated American Airlines 757 with 30,000 lbs. of donated food supplies from Denver churches and residents. She and a volunteer flight crew flew the food to several orphanages in Haiti. “We coordinate four or five missions a month,” she says. “But I am deeply moved by each one. The faces of these little children never leave my mind.”

—Janna Graber

More Information: 

Airline Ambassadors International
1625 West Crosby Road, Suite 132
Carrollton, TX 75006
nrivard@airlineamb.org