Feature Friday -- Laurel Holmes

This edition of Feature Friday focuses on an L+M employee that doesn’t just rest when she’s on vacation!

Laurel Holmes is not the type to sip umbrella drinks on a cruise ship when she vacations.

It’s true the director of L+M’s Community Health, Outreach + Partnerships rejuvenates her spirit in exotic ports, but she does it in rugged clothing, working hard to help people improve their lives.

It all began when she was looking for a way to celebrate a milestone birthday. She learned about Habitat for Humanity’s “Global Village Program,” and was soon headed for Guatemala, also the birthplace of her daughter.

“Our team worked on three houses, alongside the families that would live there,” she recalls. “We hauled stone, cinder block and sand, mixed cement by hand, bent rebar and shaped cinder blocks with machetes, hammers and hatchets.”

Six months later, Laurel traveled to Cambodia for a week and helped her team built a rainwater tower for a village and a latrine for a school.

This past January, Holmes went to Thailand, where they built a house for a family in a small village.

“On each trip, I’ve worked with an amazing team of people,” she says. “The feeling I get from giving back and the expressions on the families’ faces are my inspiration. Through my work at L+M, I have seen that when peoples’ basic needs are not met, their overall health and wellbeing is compromised. I feel privileged to be able to make a contribution in this way.”