Warachal E. Faison, president of the Ebony Society for Philatelic Experiences and Reflections (ESPER), died March 19th at her home in Jersey City, NJ. She was 54. We do not know the cause of death at this time.

“Certainly her passing was a shock to all of ESPER,” group vice president Howard Ingram told The Virtual Stamp Club. “She will be missed.”

Faison was scheduled to graduate in May 2022 with her MBA from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ and will be awarded her degree posthumously. She was working as a geriatric psychiatrist and Medical Director, Women’s and Men’s Health at Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company. Dr. Faison has been recognized for her work as a health care provider, researcher, and community advocate in health disparities, minority recruitment into Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, women’s health issues, and mental health.

In philately, she was recently named one of philately’s Most Influential people by Linn’s Stamp News. According to an interview in the Most Influential Philatelists report, Faison collected stamps “relating to health care and medicine along with materials of the African diaspora, particularly anything showing African-American women.”

She spoke to The Virtual Stamp Club about Dorothy Height, civil rights and women in civil rights for a 2017 radio feature, which you can hear here.

“Warachal Faison was ESPER’s first female president, and she was very passionate about continuing the female founder’s ambition of ESPER being a beacon in the philatelic community,” Don Neal, editor of ESPER newsletter Reflections told VSC. “During her tenure, Warachal was instrumental in establishing several collaborations between ESPER and others. Hopefully, these will continue in her honor.”

Faison joined ESPER in 2014 and soon revolutionized the use of social media, not only for ESPER, but for stamp collecting organizations in general.

“Mentor those who are interested and you might even gift them a membership into a society,” she told Linn’s. “Just watch what happens.”

Her funeral will be held Friday, April 1st, at St. Joseph AME Church in Durham, NC.

The family’s obituary, on the funeral home’s website, can be found here.