Woman of Impact and Teen of Impact

Houston, Texas

Brandy Parker and her daughter, Rebecca, were born with heart defects. After years of medication and doctors’ visits, they were put on a transplant list and finally received two new hearts.

Sadly, Rebecca passed away in 2017. When Brandy joined the Woman of Impact program in 2022, she declared Rebecca is “the reason I said ‘yes.’ I love getting her story out there and being vulnerable with so many people.”

Brandy said Woman of Impact empowered her, taking her outside her comfort zone for a rewarding and humbling experience. She used her platform to share her daughter’s story and the Go Red for Women mission with everyone she could think of — and built her confidence along the journey.

“It’s been an amazing adventure,” she said.

Dallas, Texas

Sheena Fannin didn’t know she had a heart condition until an arrhythmia caused her to lose consciousness while caring for her two young sons.

Now, she has a pacemaker and defibrillator and partners with her health care team to ensure she stays healthy.

“This experience helped me with my own fight with heart disease,” Fannin said. “Since being diagnosed as high risk for sudden cardiac death and having a pacemaker and a defibrillator implanted, I felt as though so much was out of my control. This was my way of taking that control back and really turning my situation into something positive.”

When Fannin was nominated as a Woman of Impact, she thought it was her chance to be a part of something powerful and to encourage others going through a similar experience.

Throughout her campaign, Fannin and her impact team of 22 people focused on raising awareness — not just raising funds.

“I was really raw and honest in what I shared during my time as a Woman of Impact, because I wanted people to know that even though I did everything I was supposed to, even though I thought I was healthy, heart disease still hit me,” she said.

Fannin urges future nominees to “jump in and don’t hold back!”

Akron, Ohio

For Sherry Neubert, family history is a mixed bag.

Some of her grandparents lived for 100 years and others’ lives were cut short due to heart disease. This, combined with losing a friend at a young age to a heart attack, inspired her to do more to encourage others to live longer and healthier.

Neubert’s time as a Woman of Impact was marked by an expansive and diverse impact team, multiple events, sponsors and weeks of social media posts for the Go Red for Women awareness campaign.

It’s inspiring, she said, to know that she contributed to more people — women and men — knowing their risks and understanding the American Heart Association’s mission.

“What I’m most proud of is the impact we had on ourselves and on our community,” she said. “I still get emails from people who say they went to the doctor or scheduled a checkup or they changed their lifestyle because of our campaign. That’s the most amazing part.”

For future Woman of Impact nominees, Neubert said, “Just know you can make a tremendous impact on the lives of people you care about.”

Jeana Rettig and her team at Keck Medicine of USC sponsored events and fundraisers for their colleagues to raise awareness about disparities in women’s heart health.

They netted more than they imagined.

“We focused our campaign around Valentine’s Day, International Women’s Month and Women’s History Month to raise awareness of women’s heart health, and eventually raised far more than our original goal,” Rettig said.

“I was honored to meet some amazing women leaders throughout this journey and humbled by their ‘why,’ their dedication and their passion for making a difference.”