Volunteer Spotlight: Ranee Rosenberger, Alzheimer’s Association

Ranee Rosenberger is a Customer Quality Assurance Manager at McCormick’s Corporate Headquarters in Hunt Valley, MD.  She’s been a McCormick employee for 23 years.

Ranee Rosenberger understands that even the smallest of monetary donations can have a giant impact —especially when it comes to funding research for deadly diseases, like Alzheimer’s.

“Thanks to funding, we’ve made leaps and bounds when it comes to cancer, AIDS, and heart disease research,” says Rosenberger. “But Alzheimer’s disease research is not the most glamorous. We don’t have enough funding for people to get excited about. We know with money and research there can be treatment and solutions, they just haven't been discovered yet.”

Rosenberger’s grandmother was the first to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 80. Then, Alzheimer’s hit all five of Rosenberger’s great aunts. “It was the most traumatic thing to watch my parents take my grandmother off life support,” Rosenberger said. “If her brain hadn’t failed, she would have been a healthy 87-year-old.”

Her father, now 75, is the youngest of his siblings, two of whom have already passed away from Alzheimer’s. Rosenberger says her father has been seeing a neurologist and they’re monitoring his potential for Alzheimer’s. But, watching and waiting is all that Rosenberger and her family can do.

“We’re living significantly longer than we were before,” says Rosenberger. “And when you look at things like heart disease, you know what you can do to prevent or prolong it. That research doesn’t exist for Alzheimer’s yet.”

For the last three years, Rosenberger has been a board of directors member of The Alzheimer’s Association, Greater Maryland Chapter—advocating for those who can’t. As an advocate and board of directors member, Rosenberger spends time in Washington D.C. engaging with public officials and policy makers in a variety of ways: meeting in-person with officials to engage their support for critical Alzheimer’s legislation and policy changes, sending emails to legislators, and hosting events.

She and the Greater Maryland Chapter tackle Alzheimer’s as a public health crisis, which is why she dedicates her free time to speaking with state officials to determine regulatory and statutory standards for dementia training and how to designate or control spending for long-term care services and Medicaid.

“I have a fear that Alzheimer’s will happen to my parents, myself or my children,” she says. “I'm not a researcher, and I can't solve it. But what I can do is help with fundraising, awareness and petitioning the government to play a more active role.”

Rosenberger helps to plan, recruit volunteers and raise funds for the Greater Maryland Chapter, including the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, advocacy events in Washington DC and the Memory Ball, which McCormick has sponsored since its infancy.

This past year, Rosenberger helped the chapter raise over $700,000 for Alzheimer’s research. As she puts it, “We’re just trying to get the funds to be the brains behind your brain.”

Click here to learn more about the Alzheimer's Association, Greater Maryland Chapter and how you can become involved. 

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