Biography:An artist and philanthropist, Mary Ann was born in Mexico and adopted when she was just five days old by Debra and John Thompson, who was the CEO of the 7-Eleven Corporation and a civic leader in Dallas. She grew up in Dallas, surrounded by her extended family. As a child, she experienced various health problems, including hearing loss and chronic asthma, which, combined with her ethnicity, would have made it easy to grow up feeling sorry for herself. Instead, her father taught her to see challenges as opportunities for strength and wisdom. It was her family’s example that awoke her interest in issues such as human rights, the environoment and the arts. “My father taught me this world owes us nothing, yet we owe it to the world to make it a better place,” Mary Ann says.
As an artist, Mary Ann has received major awards, including ARTV’s Sculptor of the Year Award, and her company, Thompson Fine Arts, Inc., was nominated for DBCA’s Obelisk Award for donating gallery space for the Visual Arts Coalition of Dallas, which represents more than 7,500 visuals artists, and where she serves as chair of the Advisory Board.
She has also received several awards for her philanthropic and activist efforts including being recognized by Philanthropy World Magazine as a 2006 Honoree and The Foundation For Pluralism 2007 Award. She has been selected out of the state of Texas to receive the 2008 Brilliantly You Award for Excellence in Philanthropy. She has served on over 14 different boards that range from local to international in their scope, including as a current member of the Board of Trustees for The Interfaith Center of New York, Board of Advisors for The Indigenous Institute of The Americas, as well as a regular sponsor and Chair for projects such as DFW International's/VACD's Pablo Neruda Exhibition which featured several well known Mexican artists and those of Mexico’s indigenous cultures. She is described by Chicago’s WomanMade Gallery, where she serves on the Advisory Board, as “a prolific artist, writer and social activist!".
She has been a guest speaker on issues of religious tolerance, healing between divided cultures and religions, and embracing a globalized world community responsibly, for Heiffer International in Rwanda, The Foundation for Pluralism, The World Muslim Congress For Peace, The Dallas Green Alliance and will be a featured speaker in Malaysia this February for the benefit of 300 muslim women searching to discover ways to create peace in the Middle East while protecting their cultural heritage. She has also led her foundation, The Memnosyne Foundation, in its successful efforts to negotiate the first treaty and plan of action between the Traditional Leadership of the Navajo and Hopi Nations.
Together with her husband, Joshua Frenk, Mary Ann has sponsored various human rights, arts and environmental programs both individually and via the Memnosyne Foundation which most recently provided grants to three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates: Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jody Williams, as well as served as a “Gold Medal Sponsor” in honor of His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet to help his organization, Save Tibet in its international advocacy efforts of the Tibetan people.
Her interests in helping indigenous cultures worldwide stem from her contact with the indigenous people of Teotihuacan, and with her mentor Ricardo Cervantes Cervantes in particular. She explains, “While people around the world have eagerly risen up to help those in third world countries and indigenous tribes with limited means to have access to the necessities of life, far too often the original tie that bound a close knit people can be severed as a result of the western world's influence upon a once economically independent group of people.
As a result, after interviewing indigenous leaders from Japan, Africa, UK and the Americas, the Memnosyne Foundation designed the Cultural Center program to help the indigenous cultures retain their heritage, their arts, their songs, their dances, their traditional ceremonies, their traditional medicine practices, languages, and etc. so that we as mankind do not lose the rich wealth of knowledge and beauty that is otherwise endangered in a globalized world. Those tribes that have retained their culture in the face of globalization have suffered far less problems with drugs, alcohol and depression as a result of keeping their "tribal-family" ties in tact.
The intention of these centers is not to bring western mindsets into foreign lands, but rather to humbly ask to help those currently living in other cultures if we might help preserve their people's contributions to humanity before they are lost, and with it the self-confidence, spirit and heart of a people.” But this is not the only place where Mexico’s rich heritage has influenced Mary Ann’s and The Memnosyne Foundation’s goals. The stated goal of The Memnosyne Foundation, “to provide mankind with the means to encourage positive, peaceful, global collaboration in all areas of knowledge” is being achieved via their ongoing global programs and via the creation of campuses inspired by Xochicalco wherein there will be Centers for Health and Medicine, Science and Green Technology, The Arts, Spirituality, Interfaith Exploration and Library, Indigenous Cultural preservation , and Global/Local community Outreach.
She explains, "While the current focus on globalization is on how it will affect the world economy, few are discussing how else it will continue to effect the global culture of humanity: It will effect the arts, the sciences, the spirituality, and the very ecology of our planet. Today we are at a point between countries and cultures where we will either bump into each other, walk over each other or instead we can choose to collaborate with each other consciously and evolve humanity. If we allow ourselves to evolve randomly, we will invite more misunderstanding, more war, and less innovation. But if we can choose to collaborate and become the conscious cultural creators of humanity's future, that future is limitless. The creation of the Memnosyne Foundation is intended to serve the world as a means for peaceful global collaboration in all areas of knowledge."
Although the most important pursuit in her life, Memnosyne is not the only one. She and Joshua also established the John Philp Thompson Foundation to support research on non-radiation/non-chemotherapy cures for glioblastoma (brain cancer) in honor of her father who died from the terrible disease. Their first donation went to Duke University’s Brain Tumor Center’s Immunotheraphy program and their most recent donation went to a joint project between John Hopkin’s University and the University of Milan.
“When you are adopted, you can never feel entitled to anything that you possess, or to any experience that you might be blessed to have. Instead, when I see my husband, or hold the hand of a good friend, or find myself taking for granted the fact that I get to eat tonight, I realize it is all because of someone else’s generosity that the life I lead is made possible. Knowing this gives me a feeling of profound responsibility and is in itself a blessing to be able to act upon that responsibility to make a difference in this world.”
Her life, her family, her personal experience with illness and her continued contact with diverse people in a globalized world have made Mary Ann deeply aware of humanity’s need to grow and evolve together, without separating, segregating or discriminating. For her, life is both a challenge, a privilege, and a responsibility, where, following her favorite phrase, you have to “stay inspired.”
References: http://www.philanthropymagazine.com/Articles/11-1-Thompsen-Frenk.htm http://www.tablewaretoday.com/Frenk-A.htm http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=344759192 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/all/stories/061505dnmetwade.d900ce4.html http://www.oem.com.mx/elsoldemexico/notas/n493813.htm http://www.cntv.us/en/view/693