PROVIDENCE – The March of Dimes Rhode Island Chapter today announced that Merrill W. Sherman, the president and CEO of Bancorp Rhode Island Inc., will be the chapter’s 2007 Person of the Year.
She was nominated by a Leadership Advisory Council led by John Hazen White Jr., president of Taco Inc. in Cranston, and Irving Schneider, president of Johnson & Wales University.
Community leaders are selected for the annual honor based on their support of the March of Dimes and its mission of improving the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. In Rhode Island alone, the nonprofit says, about 30 babies each week are born too small, too soon.
Past winners of the Rhode Island award include John Hazen White Jr., Howard G. Sutton, Benjamin Harris III, Anne Szostak, Alan G. Hassenfeld, Jack Kramer, John Harwood, Lincoln Almond, Carol J. Grant, John Hazen White Sr. and Alan Shawn Feinstein.
Sherman will be recognized May 31, during a reception at the Renaissance Providence Hotel.
For more information, call the March of Dimes’ Rhode Island Chapter at 454-1911 or visit www.marchofdimes.com/rhodeisland.
