Meet our new Board Chair!

Dianne — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 15:38:31 +0000

Barbara and her ‘Business Leader of the Year’ Award!

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

Partners in Housing has been blessed with remarkable Board Chairs that have moved our agency forward while remaining true to our core values. In January of this year, Barbara Harris (pictured above, left) completed her two-year Board Chair term. Barbara is a force to be reckoned with, overflowing with passion for our mission and armed with nearly 30 years of housing and real estate expertise. She was recognized for her abundant work in the community by receiving the coveted Accolades award, ‘Business Leader of the Year’ in August 2021, presented by the Southern Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce. While Barbara has handed over the Board Chair reins, she will remain on the Board as past Chair for one year and will continue to play an active role on our Development Committee. With her critical thinking and creative mindset, we are thankful to have her continued involvement!

We are pleased to announce that former Board Vice Chair, Keri Ellen White (pictured above, right) has stepped into the role of Board Chair! Keri Ellen, a D49 teacher, was a Partner in our Family Self-Sufficiency Program in the 2000s. While it is common for past Partners to serve on our Board of Directors – bringing a much-needed perspective to ensuring our program is as effective as it can be – a past Partner going on to become Board Chair is a rare feat. We are thrilled to be guided by Keri Ellen’s leadership. With her sheer determination and heart for giving back, she is a role model for Partners in Housing staff, program families, and our community.

Keri Ellen’s full story can be found here.

To read the full Winter Newsletter for 2022, including a partner family update and pictures of wind storm damage, visit here.

The post Meet our new Board Chair! appeared first on Partners in Housing.

Past Partner to Board President

Dianne — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 14:53:37 +0000

A Letter from Chelley

Alice Henderson, my Partners in Housing case manager, sat across from me at my kitchen table. She said, “This is only a season of your life.” How meaningful those words were to me then, and how I needed to hear them. She told me she believed in me and my family and that we would get through this time.

And we did, thanks to Partners in Housing.

That was many years ago, but I can still feel all the feelings deep inside. Fear, dread, worry, but also, I felt hope. I had been involved in my church for over a decade, but when things got extremely hard, it was the people at Partners in Housing who intervened. They started as strangers, but now, I know them as life-long friends. They changed our lives.

Back then, I worried if my kids would turn out okay, after having gone through so much trauma. Now, they are 42, 40, and 34, and they are all doing extremely well, are engaged citizens, have their own families, and call Colorado Springs home.

Shawn is working for Gordan Construction as their superintendent and project manager for new MOSAICA, which consists of 255 affordable homes. He and Michelle have two children, Isabel and Silas. Olivia graduated from Leadership Pikes Peak. She is a community volunteer and she and Colin have Jordan. Chelise is the founder of the Waldo Waldo 5K. She and Jeff have two children, Sterling and Celestine. Along the way I became an adoptive grandma and Jack, Schafer, Drew and Zimmerman call me grandma too.

The Waldo Waldo 5k helped repair fire damage in Waldo Canyon

Each of my grown children exemplify what caring human beings are: a model they found in Partners in Housing.

I am so thankful for Partners in Housing, who not only provided a lovely home for us, but provided counseling, group meetings, life skills, financial counseling, and encouraged me to go back to school.

After graduating from their program, I taught for 21 years in Academy School District 20 at Mountain River Middle School. I recently retired and now run two Airbnb’s and work part-time for the Myron Stratton Home providing subsidies to seniors in need.

In April of 1999, I joined the board and later became the Board Chairperson. We worked on so many exciting programs, and at the root of all those initiatives were people, like me, who encountered the devastation of homelessness with their families, but were given the hope and the time needed to repair and rebuild their lives. I served on the board until 2008 and was so pleased to receive the Women’s Foundation Be Bold Award in 2007, given to women whose passion for the well-being of Colorado’s women and girls has inspired them to do great things. How fondly I remember Dick, Frank, Louise, Mary, Donnis, Sherri, Alice, Alison and fellow Board members Sharon Tunson and Roxanne Novak, and so many others. It is an honor to be part of the Partners in Housing family.

Congratulations, Partners in Housing, on 30 years of helping those in the greatest need. I am so thankful, every single day, for your outpouring of genuine, practical, inch by inch, day by day, LOVE to me and my family. A thousand-fold blessing for your generosity and support for those who are hurting and homeless with children in this community.

Chelley Gardner-Smith

Feature Image: Chelley and Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace

Left to Right: Frank Stampf, Dick Conn, Sherri L. Albertson, Chelley Gardner-Smith and Erin Taylor at the “Be Bold” luncheon.

Chelley Gardner-Smith was recognized as one of only 20 Colorado recipients for the Women’s Foundation “Be Bold” awards. This one-time award honors women whose passion for the well-being of Colorado’s women and girls has inspired them to do great things.