Our perfume company, Villa des Parfums, was born out of our vision for community transformation and inspired by the work of our non-profit Parfums de Vie in Grasse, where for over a decade we’ve been walking alongside disadvantaged kids and their families, providing opportunities for education and leadership development and helping to break the poverty cycle.

These words, written by Shann Ray Ferch, resonate with my soul.
“…If we want to be people who love others deeply enough that they become more healthy and more wise and more free and more autonomous and better able to be servants, then we are in for a profound and often excruciating call. I believe this call emerges from the center of humanity, the nexus of the human and the divine: the call to be a true person, a person who then influences people because the true person is responsible to surrender to their own healing and then to help heal the heart of humanity…..”

I love these words because they describe so perfectly what our nonprofit Parfums de Vie is committed to: the healing of our own hearts and simultaneously devoting our hearts to the healing of those around us. I had the privilege of meeting Gonzaga professor and writer Shann Ray Ferch several years ago and he gave me a couple of his books. I found his writing to be so powerful and encouraging as somehow he gives words to what we are seeking to live!

The above is a quote from ‘Conversations on Servant-Leadership, Insights on Human Courage in Life and Work’. I thoroughly recommend it, and also ‘Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity. Servant Leadership as a Way of Life.’