Thank You
Last week, I announced that I will retire from Wellpoint Care in 2025, and I am grateful for the kind words and well wishes that I have received since my announcement. I believe deeply in the mission and vision of Wellpoint Care, which focuses on the potential for children and families to thrive, and I have believed this for almost 35 years. The time has flown by.
In some ways, I feel like I’ve been preparing for this blog for a long time. One thing I know is that who we are today is radically different from the organization I joined in 1990. Over those years, our mission has stayed the same, while the ways we serve the community have significantly changed. Starting in 2007, we studied Trauma Informed Care, then created the Seven Essential Ingredients (7ei) curriculum and wove it into our practice in all programming. We’ve trained 80,000 people across Wisconsin and beyond, with 800 of them trained as trainers of 7ei for their organizations and communities. We embraced diversity, equity and inclusion many years before George Floyd. We created the Five Pillars of Stability in 2013 to address social determinants of health.
There are so many things to share today about where we are as an organization in our mission and vision to serve the community — there are shiny bright things and some more difficult things. In total, they come together to create a state of the agency that is strong, stable, optimistic and forward-looking.
What can I share about Wellpoint Care today? Well, that our employees remain our greatest asset in our quest to serve the community in a trauma-informed, culturally humble way. We are growing at 334 employees strong, and increasingly as we come together, we more closely mirror the demographics of the communities where we serve. We have a high rehire rate and our employee engagement numbers are increasing year over year.
We are growing the number of people we serve, too. In 2023, we served 6,500 people and met another 5,000 people through our community engagement efforts, for a total of 11,500 people. As a comparison, when I started here as a part-time volunteer services manager, we served 135 boys in residential treatment and another 40 or so in Treatment Foster Care, and supported two classrooms for school-based mental health — one in Elmbrook and one in Germantown.
Since my retirement announcement, some people have asked why I have stayed so long in one place. The answer is simple. I have stayed because we are always striving to support positive change for children and families in the community; introducing the innovation of Trauma Informed Care to Wisconsin and beyond; looking to change existing systems of care to be more accessible; learning with humility about the impact of historical and generational trauma. Change has been a hallmark of this era of Wellpoint Care’s history and that has kept me fired up and focused. Disruptive innovation can be a positive goal, and I imagine that this goal will remain a driver of the organization’s future.
So, it’s time to turn the page and hand the baton of leadership to a new leader sometime next year. I am excited for this and hopeful for the future. And I will be cheering from the sidelines.
As I look back, I am so grateful to our dedicated employees, community partners, donors and colleagues. Working together, we have made a difference and the future looks bright!
