V Viola Davis

Her gives voice to a long held passion to let others know their value.

“I feel like when people don’t feel valued and they don’t feel like they matter there’s nothing but self-destruction and external destruction,” Davis observes. “That’s what comes out of it. You need to know that you have some investment in this world and some space in the world. My husband is always saying there are 400 families in this country that are billionaires and if they moved out we would be a third world country. That gives you an idea of the gulf between the haves and have nots. We gotta give voice to the voiceless.”

Her “a-ha” moment came when she was just nine.

“I remember my parents fighting in the middle of the night.,” she recalls. “It was so bad that I started screaming at the top of my lungs. My older sister Dianne told me to go in the house or people would hear me. I ran in the house. I ran to the bathroom, screaming still and got down on my knees and closed my eyes. I put my hands together and said, “GOD! If you exist, if you love me, you’ll take me away from this life! Now I’m going to count to 10 and when I open my eyes, I want to be gone! You hear me?!”

And I put my hands together and I was really believing it. “One!” And then I got to eight. “Nine! 10!” And I opened my eyes … and I was still there. But he left me right there so when I gained vision, and strength, and forgiveness, I could remember what it means to be a child who was hungry. I could remember what it means to be in trauma. I could remember poverty, alcoholism. I could remember what it means to be a child who dreams and sees no physical manifestation of it. I could remember because I lived it. I was there. And that has been my biggest gift in serving.

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself,” states the classically trained actress, whose first love is theater.

That humanity is what inspired Davis to serve as an ambassador for Hunger Is, helping the foundation raise millions of dollars to feed undernourished children and what moved her to narrate a documentary about diabetes called "A Touch of Sugar," which is part of Merck's America's Diabetes Challenge. She was diagnosed with pre-diabetes in 2016 and her family history is rife with Diabetes.

A practicing Christian, Davis–who has been married to husband Julius for 20 years and has a 16-year old daughter, Genesis–is thankful to God not only for her abundant blessings but for how people are positively affected by her work. She likes to quote the old saying about the two most important days of one’s life being the day they were born and the day one finds out why, believing that people are called to live a life greater than their own.