Melanie Woolman took the helm as president and CEO of United Way of Weld County on Sept. 15 last year, after Jeannine Truswell decided to retire and handed Woolman the reins.
Given Truswell’s 36 years of steady leadership heading the nonprofit, the tasks ahead for Woolman might seem daunting. But she said she’s been preparing since sixth grade to spend her life in the nonprofit arena.
That’s when her class was assigned a research paper designed to build deductive reasoning skills by summarizing information in an article.
“We could choose animal testing or poverty, which is what I picked. The article was about Sub-Saharan Africans living on less than a dollar a day,” Woolman said. “I was fascinated about what was happening in other parts of the world.”
That paper jumpstarted a plan to work internationally, which she cemented by earning bachelor’s degrees in international relations and political science from Canisius College, a small Jesuit college in Buffalo, New York.
Woolman said how the college’s mission statement evolved over its 150 years of offering higher education founded her belief she was on the right career path.
“The statement used to be, ‘Men for others.’ Then, it was, ‘Men and women for others.’ Today, it’s ‘men and women, for and with others.’ I want to be able to grow and evolve in the same way the Jesuits have as a community. I want to be someone who is both for and with others,” she said.
Schools run by Jesuits, a religious order tied to Catholicism, are run on traditions of social justice, equality and instilling in people a desire to improve the world, both spiritually and the lives of others overall.
Part of Woolman’s international relations degree required a mission trip to learn through immersion in a community.
Along with a small group of peers, she chose El Salvador. It was an opportunity to put Jesuit teachings into practice, taking her first steps walking with others in an unfamiliar community.
“It was during the summer of 2012, and at the time, it was the most dangerous country in the world because it was the aftermath of the Salvadoran civil war, which ended in January 1992,” she said. “We spent nearly six months learning about the war’s impact, the country’s history and its culture before arriving.”
Woolman’s days spent walking with people in remote villages — walking the trails where recently there had been guerrilla warfare — transformed Woolman’s life.
“So much of our world and our expectations and what we think we need is relative,” she said, recalling her rationalization after encountering a furry spider the size of a softball above her head in the corner of a hut where she and a classmate lived with a Salvadoran family.
“It was a home with three or four children, a mother, father and grandfather,” she said. “I was trying to go to sleep on a cot on the floor that had very dirty Minnie Mouse sheets, and there was this spider. But I realized this is more than OK. I’m here with a loving family who opened their home to me.”
Woolman ended up falling asleep more quickly than she’d ever thought possible, waking up the next morning to find the family making breakfast and their daughter handing her a bracelet she’d made as a gift.
That’s when Woolman said she began to get the underpinnings of generosity: we have more to give than we think we do to have a meaningful, fulfilling life.
She hopes to apply this re-examined idea of generosity in her new leadership role at United Way as she encourages the community to give more money and time.
“Even a little bit can go such a long way,” she said. “That Salvadoran family may not have said they needed much more, but reliable transportation would have been good. The father would sit in the back of a pickup each morning with eight to 10 others to get to work.”
But she also counsels about the concept of toxic charity: when people who aren’t from a community enter one dissimilar from theirs and make the assumption they have all the answers to solve a problem.
It’s something she learned in a back-to-back experience after returning from El Salvador. On her return to the United States, she spent the fall of 2012 studying abroad at Semester at Sea, an affiliate of Colorado State University, where students live aboard a ship and visit ports around the world while learning through coursework about other people and cultures.
That experience on the ship is why she encourages people to spend time with those who are dissimilar from themselves. Getting involved in Weld Project Connect, serving a meal at a shelter or handing out diapers at the Covering Weld Diaper Bank are all good methods to learn about micro-communities within the larger whole.
Those months of her educational journey and lived experiences were the nexus for the idea that communities who solve their own challenges become stronger in the process.
That idea drove her to one year of service with AmeriCorps in 2014, during which she worked for United Way of Weld County.
Her year of service came with a tough assignment: determine whether Greeley and Weld County had a homelessness problem. After her service year concluded, she was hired full-time as the community impact coordinator, a job she believes was a good fit.
“I love strategic planning, budget work and facilitating how to bring people together,” she said. “Working with United Way solidified that I’m not a case worker.”
Woolman describes her work ethic as a “long-term committer,” a visionary who excels at evaluating how things could look in three, five or 10 years. The promotion to director of community impact allowed her to hone skills as she gained oversight of programming and four of United Way’s five initiatives, including Reading Great By 8 (Early Childhood), Thrive by 25 (Youth Development), Weld’s Way Home (Homelessness) and Aging Well for older adults.
She’s looking forward to following the path set by United Way’s board of directors, one which draws on community input, donors and the longtime guidance of her predecessor, Jeannine Truswell.
Woolman said coming into her new position is humbling. But as a lifelong learner and someone who believes that fulfillment comes from the smallest levels of giving, she’s already anticipating a world of change, step by step on the path set out by the organization’s strong commitment to the people of Weld County.
— Emily Kemme, longtime Greeley resident, is an author and regular contributor to the Greeley Tribune, A&E Spotlight and MyWindsor Magazine, among other publications.
This content was originally published here.
