Jesuit Collaborative

“When you pray, move your feet!”  “I love that saying,” says Joanne Fantini.  As a mother of four children, corporate executive, and active Ignatian spiritual director, Joanne has had a lot of experience praying and moving her feet at the same time.  Indeed, she appears to run on an endless supply of physical and spiritual energy.

Joanne says she is “living out” her vocation as a mother, business executive and spiritual director and “out of a sense that we are all one”.   Joanne’s children are grown now, two out of college and two in college.  Joanne earned a degree in theology and philosophy as an undergrad at Merrimack College in Andover, MA, and while there was first introduced to spiritual direction.  She later did graduate studies in spirituality and ministry at Boston College and experienced the 19th Annotation under the direction of Brian McDermott, S.J.  She calls that experience the “great awakening” and has come to understand out of living that experience that one, “enters the Spiritual Exercises, but there is no exit.”  

Having experienced the graces of the Spiritual Exercises herself, Joanne now helps others to experience them as a spiritual director and director of retreats including the 19th Annotation.  She says that the most rewarding aspect of spiritual direction is, “the awesomeness of people’s trust in sharing their God story with another human being.”  

Joanne has worked for small European pharmaceutical companies for most of her career.  She currently serves as Area Business Manager of the Greater Boston Area for Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals (RBP), a “global addiction company” operating out of a Public Health Model.  She describes the company’s mission as, “pioneering treatments for people with addictions, helping to transform one life at a time.”  Joanne says that in recent years her corporate work and ministry have become much more integrated as she shares the gifts of spiritual direction and lives more deeply out of a Christocentric life with the people she meets in the addiction field.  

Joanne serves as a Mission Leader for the company’s pioneering initiative with Save the Children (STC) to improve the lives of children working in brick kiln factories in the rural areas of West Bengali, India.  She explains that thousands of children are trapped in brick kiln factories, many trafficked or kidnapped from the rural areas of West Bengali; more than half of the workers are women and children who are expected to carry 88 lbs of bricks on their heads for 656 feet 15-20 times per day (2 and 1/2 miles each day).  STC and RBP are working together to eradicate child labor, provide childcare for working mothers and education centers for the children.  Joanne’s blog from a recent trip to India and a video about the project are available at: http://www.myrbopportunity.com/guest-bloggers/joanne-a-fantini/
 
In reflecting on her life’s work and mission, Joanne says that she has been given gifts by God that don’t belong to her and are meant to be given away.  She points to Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12:48, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.”  Joanne says that the impact of the Exercises on her life reveals itself more and more everyday and that “the mission of The Jesuit Collaborative ‘promoting the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius’ is where my heart is.”  Joanne has worked within TJC to help plan the Ignatian conferences, providing programs on Ignatian spirituality, as a facilitator for the initiative on Discerning the Future of the Ministry of the Spiritual Exercises; and she will offer with a team the 19th Annotation in the fall.  

Ignatius understood that the experience of God that led him to develop the Exercises did not belong to him, that it was meant to be given away.  Fortunately for many people, Joanne Fantini shares that understanding and lives out of it every day.