Editor's note: "The Faith in Our Lives" is a series spotlighting Catholics in various walks of life, and how they connect faith with what they do.

The first turning point in Noel Irwin Hentschel's life happened after she graduated from Notre Dame Academy in Los Angeles and was traveling with a girlfriend through Europe. While reading the best seller "Exodus," the teenager decided that she just had to spend some time in Israel and see the Holy Land.

"I was sitting in Elot on the Red Sea looking out, and, really, I had a vision that this is what I should do is to go into the travel industry, eventually have my own company and to take care of and service visitors," the 53-year-old mother of seven recalls today, smiling.

She lived in Israel for two years, taking American tourists around the country. And when she came back to Southern California, she wanted to learn everything she could about the industry. So she applied at Western Airlines to be a flight attendant, but, to her great surprise, was just over the stringent weight-height requirements.

So she got a job in air cargo, which was a man's field, and later started working for the CEO at a tour operator, where she sat in on high-level negotiations with airlines and hotels companies. After that came a stint at British Caledonian Airways putting together tour packages.

Along the way of her hands-on education, she had a brainstorm: How about starting a travel business that would focus on bringing people to the United States instead of putting together foreign tours for Americans? And that's exactly what the then-24-year-old woman and Michael Fitzpatrick, an Englishman working in a Beverly Hills travel agency, did in 1977.

That first year, AmericanTours International brought 10,000 visitors to the U.S., including 60 Dutch road builders; today, the number approaches 500,000 people from some 70 countries. The $100 million-plus yearly enterprise employs 150 workers, with corporate headquarters near LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and offices in New York, Orlando, Hawaii, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

During the last decade, ATI has become the internet travel provider for AAA as well as Univision, the Spanish-language television network. The travel company also sold a minority interest to AAA.

Meeting Mother Teresa
With all her success in the business world, however, Hentschel is quick to point out that the second - and most important - turning point in her life didn't happen until 1988, when she encountered Mother Teresa face to face.

She and her husband Gordon, a developer, were at a conference of young entrepreneurs in Delhi, India, of all places, with the saint of Calcutta as the keynote speaker.

"We were in the very back of the room when she said, 'If each one of you would use the same drive you used to build your business, but you used that to help others, just think what a difference that could make for a better world,'" she recalls.

"And it was pretty much like lightening struck at that moment. She went right through who you were. At least, that what she did to me, and I know my husband felt the same."

The businesswoman ran all the way from the back of the room to the front as soon as the nun stopped speaking, handing her a note she wrote the night before, along with a small contribution. Mother Teresa embraced and held her.

"I've never felt that since - that you were touching God by being held by her," Hentschel confides. "That was the most turning point experience in my life out of all of my turning points. Up until then I knew I cared about others, being the oldest of ten. That's how I was raised by my parents and going to Catholic School.

"But I also had that other side of me that was really focused on the business side of being successful and working day and night to build a business," she admits. "So she put it into perspective as to why I was doing all that. She may have been saying 'You have been given so much' to 400 people in the room, but I actually felt it was being directed to me personally."

A year later, Hentschel established The Noel Foundation, with its first focus on helping women in developing countries to become successful. Grants have funded adoption, education, health care, environmental and other anti-poverty programs in the United States and around the world.

Later the philanthropic organization decided to honor women who were making a difference in the world, with donations going to projects to help the poor in their name.

The first recipients were Corazon Aquino, who led the "people-powered" revolution in the Philippines; Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, Gro Harem Brundtland, Norway's prime minister, and Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain.

'Incredible experience'
Mother Teresa, who received the foundation's "Life" award in 1995, two years before she died, and her Missionaries of Charity have continued to be Hentschel's favorite charity. But she's gone far beyond financial support to using her business savvy and international connections to help establish new MC homes for the poorest of the poor and AIDS victims.

Currently, homes are going up in Sacramento, Oakland, San Diego and Rosarito, Mexico, with China on the near horizon.

The Noel Foundation, which is run by executive director Rebecca Rueseler, also provides food and supplies that the Missionaries of Charity give away to L.A.'s downtown homeless every Sunday. And workers at AmericanTours International, including Chairman/CEO Hentshel, go along with the sisters at least once a month on their inner-city rounds.

"For me, personally, it's an incredible experience," she reports. "And it's an incredible experience for any human being who actually meets and talks to the person that you're helping."

And she smiles again.

"We have a philosophy of the company that we never say no to the Missionaries of Charity," she says. "It's all part of the culture of this company, the humanitarian side of the caring and service. And, of course, the ultimate service is to God."

Like others in the travel industry, ATI has had to weather a number of crises, going back to the air traffic controllers strike, the grounding of DC-10 jumbo jetliners, the Persian Gulf War and, more recently, 9/11, the Iraq War and the SARS outbreak.

But through it all, Hertshel's faith has provided steadfast support.

"My Catholic faith has always been the strength in which I felt I could overcome anything," she says. "It was really my faith that was the driving force in not only my life, but also the business. We've been blessed during difficult times. And through all of that, we've continued to not only survive, but also to thrive.

"Why does that happen?" the businesswoman asks. "Yes, there's certain skills like having the right team and making certain decisions. But I also really believe that it's because God is helping to guide you. And so that means you have a responsibility to give back and to help others."