A finance graduate of Queensborough Community College, Paula Pipitone has served as a senior administrative assistant and executive assistant for prominent finance, import, and health care companies in New York City for more than 15 years. Outside of her professional life, Paula Pipitone stands out as a dedicated member of the community who supports nonprofit groups and organizations, such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

One of the world’s largest and most important nonprofit organizations devoted to children’s health, St. Jude has supported research into pediatric diseases and provided no-cost treatment to children with serious conditions for more than 50 years. Though the organization is supported today by countless individual, corporate, and institutional donors around the world, St. Jude was initially created through the efforts of one man, the actor and entertainer Danny Thomas.

Before he became an international celebrity, Danny Thomas was a struggling young performer in Detroit with a wife and a baby on the way. Nearly broke with no way to pay the hospital bills for his wife’s delivery, he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes, to help him. Miraculously, two days later he received a well-paid offer to perform, which helped him pay his bills. Over the next few years, as Thomas began to establish himself in the entertainment industry, he regularly called upon St. Jude to show him the way, and he promised that he would build the saint a shrine if he succeeded.

By the 1950s, Thomas had become one of the biggest stars in the United States, and along with fellow entertainers, friends, and community groups he began to raise money for what would eventually become St. Jude Research Hospital. After several years of his tireless efforts, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital officially opened on February 4, 1962, in Memphis, Tennessee.