Chris Pilkerton

Location: New York, N.Y.

Chris Pilkerton, a compliance director at JP Morgan Chase (No. 21), and his wife, Amanda, were already thinking about adoption in Oct. 2014, when news started to come from Ebola-stricken countries of a flood of orphans left in the disease’s wake. They reached out to a Liberia-based NGO called Orphan Concern, run by a man named Amos Sawboh, to see how they could help. Because of the moratorium on international adoptions in the country put in place in 2009, the Pilkertons knew that adoption wasn’t an immediate option. Instead, they organized a drive in their apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, collecting 600 pounds of clothes and food for Liberian orphans. When Sawboh told the couple about the unemployed Liberian man who was suddenly caring for some 20 orphans in his village, the Pilkertons were especially moved. Chris organized another drive at JP Morgan, this time amassing more than 2,000 pounds of supplies for Liberian orphans. He hopes to double that amount at his next collection drive, this time in a JP Morgan office in Ohio, by the end of June.