We were lucky to catch up with Florencia Moran recently and have shared our conversation below.

Florencia, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

LIFT Sports Foundation is a non-profit company created to help professional athletes with their philanthropic endeavors by energizing their personal missions. We do this by educating and guiding professional athletes with their charitable missions and connecting them with underserved community organizations.

We also take on projects ourselves and create opportunities for those in need and provide them with a better life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

My whole life has been surrounded by athletes and sports. Growing up, I played tennis, golf, volleyball, softball, field hockey, and even handball (Argentinian sport). I worked as a sports agent for 14+ years and once I had my fourth child (today they are 5, 6, 7 and 8 years old), I decided to put my career on hold and raise them. Sports have been the reason why I decided to start the LIFT Sports Foundation.

After traveling around the world for 5 months with our family of 6 (my kids were 1, 2, 3 and 4 year old at the time), I learned so much and I also realized that my PURPOSE in life was to GIVE back to those in need. After seeing the best (fancy hotels) to see the worst (floating villages, kids running barefoot to their homes made out of cardboard, etc), I can say that all I wanted was to try my best to bring big smiles on their faces and LIFT them up. We are so lucky to live in a country with so many resources and generous people. I could write a book someday about coming to America to play golf on a full ride speaking zero English, working 3 jobs to sustain myself so my parents wouldn’t have to sell their car or ask friends/family for money because things were getting harder at home, sitting in the wrong class for a whole semester, and the list goes on and on… l have so many good and bad stories and met so many great people that LIFTed me up me when I was down and encouraged me to always be myself and work hard for my dreams. If there is one person that inspired me to do this the most, it is my Mom. She’s the most selfless, generous, courageous and kind person I know. Today and for the past 10 years she has been making sure 20 abandoned abused and neglected sweet girls in need of a happy home are safe and happy. Hogar San Jose is located in Dolores (my hometown) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is one of the nonprofits we’ve helped since the beginning.

Florencia Quarles founder:

• Latin (born and raised in Argentina)
• Experience managing professional careers of world top ranked pro golfers (Jhonattan Vegas, Lexi Thompson, Angel Cabrera , Julian Etulain, Stuart Appleby, etc)
• Lifelong competitive athlete | 2 time national champion (golf)+ 2 times state champion (tennis)
• NCAA DIV I athlete (golf) | full scholarship
• Bachelors in Finance and MBA (finished 1 year ahead of schedule) | Jacksonville State University
• Growing up as a foster family we took care of 9+ kids and currently my mom runs a non profit home (hogar) of 20+ abandoned and/or abused girls in Argentina to provide them with a better and safer life
• Mom of 4 bilingual kids

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I just turned 19, I moved to the US with a full ride scholarship to play golf in college (Jacksonville State University). Not only were cellphones not a thing, neither did I have money to have my own computer. That meant that I only talked to my family once a week for 10 min max. from the dorm landline phone since calling cards were expensive.

Even though I did know any English (I only passed the SAT because I was good at Math), I still decided to do it and move to the US. Little did I know back then that after almost a year of being the “shy girl” (if you know me, you know my personality is totally the opposite), I would make the US my home and become a US citizen many years laters. Lots of funny stories in between (i.e. I sat in the wrong class for a whole semester, it took me years to figure out what Y’all meant, ha!) and lots of amazing friendships came out of this college experience, but also made me stronger. Those sacrifices made me a better person and thought me how to appreciate people by who they are, not by what they have or what you can get in return from them.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to learn the hard lesson of “I cannot help everybody”.

At the beginning, when I first started LIFT, I wanted to help every single person/case/organization I knew that needed help. I also learned that not all of them have the best intentions and you have to do your research.

For example, I keep the projects non-political (I don’t want to get involved with any parties and/or political groups or representatives) and I always make sure I say this on the first time I meet them. Being far away (usually these projects are located in South and Central America) and not knowing the insights played against me. I didn’t see this one coming and sure enough, some people (political party) took advantage of our work and made it their own. I learned the hard way for sure…we invested so much time and money into this project as well as putting my heart to it. All you can do is learn and move forward!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lift-sports.org
• Instagram: liftsportsfoundation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florencia-moran-bb81225/

Image Credits
LIFT Sports Foundation