Name: Alexis DeJoria
What is your job? Driver, Kalitta Motorsports Patrón XO Cafe nitro Funny Car
What social causes are most important to you? Grow Appalachia & anything relating to women’s health.
Most recently, I’ve gotten involved with the Nevada Health Centers’ Mammovan
program.
How do you support these? Grow Appalachia- I donate money and spread awareness of the
organization with my family whenever possible.
Nevada Health Centers- I worked with this organization to
bring their mammovan out to our most recent Las Vegas NHRA race and provide
free mammograms for any woman in attendance throughout all three days of the
race weekend, regardless of whether or not they had health insurance.
Why do you have a passion for these in particular, is
there a personal tie?
There are very personal ties with both. Grow Appalachia was
started by my father, John Paul DeJoria. A friend and executive at John Paul
Mitchell Systems (a company co-founded and co-owned by my dad) grew up in rural
Appalachia and explained the hardships of food security. My dad is a natural
problem solver, especially when it comes to issues at home here in America, so
upon hearing the story, he created Grow Appalachia. The organization helps
those living in the impoverished region create a way to help feed their
families and empower themselves. They teach people how to grow their own
organic gardens which not only enables them to feed their families healthy
food, but supplies them with a chance to sell their produce as well- it’s a
win-win all around.
I decided to get involved with the Nevada Health Centers
last year after we lost some very special women in the racing community to
various forms of cancer. Like many other professional race teams, come
mid-summer, I was meeting with my team to discuss what our campaign would be to
support October’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. Our racing community had been
hit especially hard this past year with loss, and I really wanted to do
something more than just run a pink race car and donate a portion of proceeds
of our merchandise to a breast cancer charity. Those things are great, don’t
get me wrong, but I wanted to do something that could perhaps be a direct
impact on our racing community. I wanted to do something that could be a
preventative measure, rather than just a reactive measure. That’s where we came
up with the idea of ‘hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could bring a mobile
mammogram unit out to the race track and provide free mammograms?’ We race in
Las Vegas in October, so we called around to a few different organizations out
there, and really liked what Nevada Health Centers stood for- they were
completely on the same page as us. Thanks to a partnership with them, we were
able to provide over 100 free mammograms to women attending the race that
weekend. According to NVHC, over 80% of the women that took part in the free
mammogram program that weekend did not have health insurance, and told us that
if we hadn’t provided this service, they likely would not have had this
important screening performed otherwise, which is really staggering, if you
think about it.
Is there a particular way you would want to encourage
readers to be involved? I think just do anything you can. Even if you aren’t able to
help out financially, that’s alright. Sometimes an extra pair of hands is even
more appreciated. Encourage your children to get involved at a young age.
How would you define social responsibility? As much as we want to help the whole world, I believe that
charity starts at home. We need to help our own people before we go outside the
U.S. There are so many issues that need to be addressed in our own backyards, &
our own communities first. Start small and work your way from there. Don’t let
the term ‘social responsibility’ overwhelm you. Something as simple as donating
your time at a shelter, serving meals, is a great first step.
Quick list of your tattoos and artists: Mark Mahoney & Bob Vessels have done the majority of my
work. I’m also in the process of getting some new work done on my arm by Nikko Hurtado
who has done my husband’s chest, which looks awesome- like a painting. His work
looks very realistic. Each artist that
I’ve chosen has something very cool and unique about their particular style of
work; I like to have a mixture of tattoo styles; not the same all over.
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