President and CEO
Family Foundations of Northeast Florida
Mission
Vision: Healthy, vibrant communities of strong, connected families.
Mission: Building strong and financially secure families.
Serving Jacksonville
Family Foundations (originally Family Counseling Services) was founded by the Junior League, United Way of Northeast Florida, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and the Jewish Welfare League in 1956 to ensure that all families have access to professional, individual and family counseling services regardless of their ability to pay. Since then we have expanded our services to meet the diverse needs of families.
Those served
We serve the five-county Northeast Florida area (Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns). I am proud to say that we have served generations of families over the past 55 years and that we have been a trusted resource for more than 130,000 local families coping with financial and family problems.
We believe that every child deserves a financially stable family in which to grow and thrive. Our services focus on three areas:
• Increased income and assets for low-income families.
• Successful homeownership through homebuyer preparation and foreclosure prevention and intervention.
• Strengthening family relationships through counseling.
Biggest challenge
The volume of client needs. In our current economy, poverty is growing instead of prosperity.
With one in 10 local families in foreclosure and one in five dependent upon food stamps and other supplemental benefits to meet their basic needs, we have an impending crisis on our hands.
This crisis will impact families of every income strata – families who are unable to get out of poverty have children who grow up in poverty, families who have experienced foreclosure have just lost all home equity, baby boomers will be retiring with a lack of savings as well as limited home equity that they were counting on for retirement income.
It is critical that local business leaders, both private and nonprofit, join forces to build a new framework to address this urgent issue.
Biggest satisfaction
The everyday victories that happen. Of course, it takes a very large sphere of influence to create impact and I have an amazing board of directors and professional staff that spend their day serving as ambassadors for our mission. We have the pleasure of helping families save their homes from foreclosure, to become better parents and to build stronger families.
Families are amazingly resilient. I remember one particular mother who recently reached out to me at an event and told me that I was the reason her family has been successful. I remember when she came to my office with a broken spirit. My staff helped her to complete a very intensive program to rebuild her credit and purchase her first home. Ten years later, she is still in that home and her kids have graduated from college.
Presently, I have the thrill of leading a local community initiative to help 1,000 people get out of poverty in 1,000 days. While the vision is daunting, we are identifying very specific barriers that are keeping people in poverty and addressing them with targeted strategies to move them out.
Hometown
My father was in the Navy so I had the excitement of living all over the United States while growing up, including a five-year tour of duty in Honolulu, where I attended Pearl Harbor Elementary. We were transferred to Jacksonville in my junior year of high school and happily, my entire extended family still lives here.
First experience with community service
I earned many Girl Scout badges delivering food to seniors and teaching youth how to swim. My mother graduated from the University of Hawaii with a degree in sociology and I actually used to attend some of her classes with her (long before the days of “bring your kids to work days”). At Florida State University I had numerous internships, including a wonderful opportunity to serve as a legislative aide at the capital. All of these experiences introduced me to the power of community service and the impact one person can have on the lives of others.
Your job before Family Foundations
My first job out of college was with Health and Rehabilitative Services, where I helped families access public benefits. I was soon offered the opportunity to start a new program at Family Foundations called Consumer Credit Counseling Service. I was fortunate enough to find my passion early in my career and have worked hard to build Family Foundations into the respected community nonprofit that it is today.
Upcoming events
We are participating in Birdies for Charity through the support of The Players Championship. You can support Family Foundations by entering to win through our website or by selecting Family Foundations of Northeast Florida on the Birdies for Charity website.
May 19: Our Annual Sporting Clays Classic. We welcome four-person teams as well as individual participants.
Contact information:
www.familyfoundations.org
396-4846
1639 Atlantic Blvd.
Jacksonville, FL 32207