When the burden of diabetes clouds the path in front of our participants, Jack Bickel, in his volunteer role as one of the Diabetes Foundation’s Diabetes Care Guides over the past nine years, has helped hundreds of our participants navigate their diabetes needs and safely navigate their chronic condition.

As one of our longest-serving Diabetes Care Guides, Jack is a calming compassionate presence with a keen business sense and an understanding of diabetes self-management that allows him to coordinate a participant’s resource needs including free and affordable medication, supplies, education and social support needed to ensure our participants can get on track and stay on track with their diabetes or prediabetes.

Jack explains, “I know how hard it is to have this illness, and when I started at the DF as a guide, I knew that to help people they needed consistent support and help.” “Many have problems other than diabetes,” adds Jack, who also has celiac disease, making his own dietary needs further challenging. “Many of my participants are very lonely and need someone to give them a call, and I like doing that.”

Jack came to the DF in 2014 after a successful career in accounting for Allied Building Products in East Rutherford, where he retired as CFO in 2010. As a long-time Bergen County resident, Jack has been living with the challenges of type 1 diabetes for over four decades – well before the advent of today’s CGM technology and smartphone syncing. The experience informs his approach to each conversation with participants, whom he is committed to meeting wherever they are in their diabetes journey.

Jack found the DF through an advertisement and the DF knew he would be an amazing advocate and role model for people in need. Executive Director Ginine Cilenti explains, “Jack has been the most amazing person for our organization and the people we serve”. Further, “It is for these reasons that Jack has been chosen as our 2023-24 Samuel C. Fusco Service Award Recipient. We are incredibly lucky to have him as a member of our team.”