Dorothy Gibbons

Dorothy Gibbons is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Rose, a medical non-profit that provides high quality breast healthcare to women regardless of their ability to pay. The first of its kind, Dorothy founded The Rose with Dr. Dixie Melillo in 1986. Each year, The Rose treats over 35,000 women, many of whom cannot afford to pay even $150 for a mammogram, let alone the thousands of dollars needed to pay for breast cancer treatment. Dorothy lives in Houston with her husband, Pat.

What’s your story, Dorothy?

I think if I were going to say something about myself, it would be that I am a great fan of women. I tell my employees that I am a feminist. It's not that I don't love men – I love my husband and my son, but I think if you're a feminist, you truly understand the value of a woman.

People ask me what it is about The Rose that keeps me here. Am I a survivor? Do I have a family member who is a survivor? And the answer is no to both. Breast cancer is, of course, the focus of The Rose and has been for thirty years, but it's the women that we are serving, and the stories of those women, that keep me so passionate about this organization.

I grew up in an environment where there was nothing but women around. My father left when I was young. We were very poor and living off relatives. Looking back, I see now what a strong woman my mother was, but as a child, you don't always see that. My mother died when I was twenty two years old from cervical cancer. The irony is that the Pap smear was out and available, but my mother didn’t have health insurance, and she didn’t know where to go even though she knew something was wrong. I remember her telling me that when she finally went to see a doctor, she had a douche that morning because the smell was so bad. Since I've been at The Rose, I’ve learned that smell was the smell of cancer, and that's a smell that you can't ever wash away.

Dr. Dixie Melillo,
Co-Founder and General Surgeon
of The Rose

Back in the 1970s, I was in Public Relations at Bayshore Medical Center. It was the tenth largest hospital in the city, but it had only one female physician on its active staff, Dr. Dixie Melillo. She was a surgeon too, which was even rarer. One of the things that Dixie was so passionate about was breast cancer, and she campaigned for the hospital to have a dedicated unit. Back then they were still doing mammograms with a standard x-ray unit, the kind used for broken arms, and insurance didn't cover screening mammograms, something which just doesn’t seem possible now.

So Dixie and I started going to talk to women in the area, at civic clubs and so on, to promote the Bayshore Breast Center which offered a dedicated mammogram unit.  We also went to the International Breast Cancer Conference in Miami and met Rose Kushner, who was there as a speaker.

Rose was a journalist for the Baltimore Sun and when she found a lump in her breast, her doctor told her that if they found anything during her biopsy operation, they would tell her husband and immediately do a mastectomy without waking her up. They didn't have a two-stage procedure; they didn’t wake the woman up and tell her she had breast cancer, they just went ahead and did her mastectomy. Imagine the psychological impact on those women who woke up without a breast, it was horrendous. Well, Rose was not going to let that happen to her, but it took her sixteen doctors before she would find someone who would wake her first.

I had already read Rose’s book which set out what you need to know about breast cancer for lay-people like you and me. At the conference, Dixie and I managed to have dinner with Rose and told her what we were doing to educate women in Houston, and we talked about how terrible it was to see these women who were coming in with late-stage cancer, and had no insurance to cover treatment. Rose looked at us and said, “Well, just quit your moaning, get off your ass, and go start yourselves a non-profit!”

After that, Rose would call me every Friday to ask what we had done about the non-profit, about calling our congressman, about getting Medicare to cover screening mammograms. Finally, we got our 501(c) non-profit status, and Dixie and I decided to call it The Rose as a living tribute to Rose Kushner.  We also wanted to have a name that women would feel welcomed them when they walked in the door.

The Rose’s Mobile Mammography 

Outreach Program operates 

a fleet of vans to reach thousands 

more women in outlying counties.

Now at The Rose, we can offer women a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy, and we can also help them get access to treatment. We have Patient Navigators who guide them to a treatment program somewhere. Usually we can get them into Breast and Cervical Cancer Services, which is a state program, but the problem is that BCCS doesn't have a lot of money. It’s currently being reviewed in The Senate, which could mean that next year we get even less money. Sadly, because it’s all about women's health – and we all know the way our Texas legislature feels about women's health – we have a battle on our hands. I was in Austin four times last month, sharing our women’s stories and hoping that someone would listen. Thank goodness that State Representative Sarah Davis, herself a breast cancer survivor, is working in the House to protect BCCS, so perhaps we won’t have to face that next year.

But the BCCS is just one program. Last year we diagnosed 350 women, and 260 of those were uninsured. Almost 150 of those went through BCCS, around fifty went through Harris County, and we have a few that could get into Methodist Hospital. In our outlying counties, sometimes we just have to work with the Physicians Network, with doctors who have agreed to help take care of these women pro bono. They won’t get care for every health issue, but at least they will get chemotherapy or surgery.

Why do you do what you do?

When I was the PR person at the hospital, I was also the photographer, taking pictures of tumors and things like that. When I stood outside one of Dixie’s examination rooms, I knew what I was about to see was something that no one should ever see, and I could smell that smell that I had smelled on my mother. In the first year of The Rose, Dixie had something like thirteen women whose tumors had grown so big they had exploded through the skin, and were still getting bigger and bigger. I kept thinking, how could you live with something like this and not share it with your husband or family? It's got to be on your mind the whole time. How could these women have waited this long, because these women are not dumb. It's all about access to care, and they just don’t know there is anywhere they can go for help.

And let’s be clear exactly who the uninsured are. I know people think it’s only homeless people who live under the bridge or in the park, but no. The uninsured are people like my sister, a single mother who couldn’t take a 25c an hour raise at her job because it would have meant that her diabetic son would have lost his Medicaid coverage. It’s people like the substitute school teacher that only works one day a week or the mother who can’t possibly justify spending $150 on a mammogram when she’s not sure she can afford to feed her children that night. So let's get real clear about who the uninsured are. And now we coming up against the myth that everybody has insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Wrong. Because Texas did not expand Medicaid, half of the women that we sponsored over the last three years still have nothing.

We also see a lot of young women who have invariably been misdiagnosed. They’re told it’s just a rash, or asked if they changed washing powder or deodorant, but actually it will be inflammatory breast cancer and it's very aggressive.

 

The Rose inspires all kinds of people to
raise funding to help women
with breast cancer

Every year we have to raise about $3 million to take care of nine thousand women who walk through these doors without insurance. We take care of women with insurance as well, and those insured women give us a base so that we can open our doors and take care of the uninsured. We still have to raise money but they offset some of the cost.

For every three insured women who come through our doors for a mammogram we can take care of one uninsured woman. We could do more free screenings, if one diagnostic exam was all that was needed, but by the time they come to us, many of these uninsured women are also certain to need ultrasound and biopsy too. I always tell my staff that until we don't see women with late stage cancer anymore, our job isn't done.

What is your Houston story?

I've been in Houston 64 of my almost 66 years, but you know, you can't claim to be a Texan if you're not! I was born in California, but my folks were from Texas and they moved back here. They had gone out there during the war, my father was older, so he didn't have to serve. He was working a lumber yard, then I came along and my sister came along, and we move back here to be close to my mother’s folks.

I married young, but you know, it takes two to make a marriage and two to break a marriage. I’d been without any kind of true love for a long, long time, but I was sure in my heart that love still existed. So after I’d been divorced a little while, I decided that I was going to find my beloved, and I did. I manifested the perfect man for me straight out of the universe.

First of all, I had to quit male bashing and putting men down. I also had to quit listening to my girlfriends and to all the women who were so tired of supporting men. Once I decided that I didn't want to live the rest of my life without loving someone and having them love me, I started off a ritual that I did every Friday. I started writing down scenarios about what it would be like to meet the perfect man for me. I opened my heart to love and to possibilities, and I made room in my life for another person.

Before long, I started chatting online with a man in Canada, in a non-profit grant application forum. We talked over about eighteen months, just in friendship, we never even exchanged a picture. Then he called to say that he had a friend in Houston and he was coming to see this friend over Memorial Day weekend, and would I like to meet up? You know, I fell in love with Pat that weekend, and a few weeks ago, we celebrated twelve years married.

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

Books. As a kid, I was always able to imagine something different, and I think that came from reading so much. No matter how hard things were, I was always able to go find a book and be somewhere else. You know, I get teased about having a PhD in Self-Help because I've read so many of those books, but still, I know that it is those books that can move you forward. It is those books that you can hold onto it when people let you down. The books are always there. I also know that I had teachers that pushed me to read beyond where I thought I could, to challenge myself.

What advice would you give to someone new to the non-profit sector?

I love to tell Rose’s story, because if you have something that you feel strongly about, and if there's a Rose in your life, it can make all the difference in the world. You have to find someone who's going to push you and who’s going to believe in you. And you have to believe in yourself. When I look back I know there was a lot of times we wished for a sugar daddy, or for some wonderful institution to come in and just give us all the funding we needed to go on. But do you think I would have the stories I have now if we'd had that happen? We sure would not be the same organization.

I would also tell them that even though they run a non-profit, and it’s their life’s work, it must still be run as a business. If you have a year in deficit, you don't get grants because people don't want to take a chance on you, so you have to be a successful business to a certain level, though not too successful. It's like you're always walking this little tightrope.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

I journal every morning, though I think this life/work balance is a bunch of hokey. I don't think you can find that as long as you're working. Yes, I would like to have more balance, but most of the time, when it's your passion, it doesn't feel like working. But when I do need a break, I go off to the country and work in my garden.

What does Houston mean to you?

I love Houston. We now have a little country place, but for years I couldn't imagine living anywhere else but here. I love concrete and steel. I even love the traffic. It's that excitement and bustle, and folks don't realize how convenient it is to travel around the world from here. I can be in and out in no time from the airport, but I’m always happy to come home.

I also love the diversity. I got to be part of the American Leadership Forum in Houston which is wonderful program. It changed my life, because as a senior leader with a few years behind her, it was easy to get caught up in always doing things the same way. But at ALF, you get thrown in with all these people who are business savvy, and you build relationships with them in a whole different way.  You don't even realize that you've lost that skill over the years, but it can be hard for us as adults to create new relationships with other adults after we get so settled in our lives. I would seriously encourage anyone to do it.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

It's really my own backyard – and I mean that literally, with a spade in my hand – because if you can’t find happiness in your own backyard, then where can you find it?

What's your favorite place to eat or drink?
There's a wonderful restaurant at this end of the world called Cullen’s and I love that place. When we go into town, I love Seasons 52 on Westheimer. I love Indian food too, and we like to go to little bitty places, but I'm also very lucky that my husband cooks. I think he would prefer to eat at home anytime.

What is your Houston secret?

I've been part of the Mary Magdalene community since 2005. This coming July at Christ Church Cathedral, we are having the Magdalene Festival, organized with Brigid’s Place. We are inviting artists to come and re-image Mary Magdalene.

Myths were created in the Middle Ages that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, the penitent whore, but that was a total lie. So we are inviting artists to bring us a new Mary – Mary who was a teacher and Mary who was the apostle to the apostles. After all, Mary was probably the reason why Jesus’s community could function, and without Mary Magdalene we wouldn't have Easter. She was the sole eye-witness who watched him be put on the cross, taken down again, and who followed the body to the tomb and stayed there all night. Her name was the first name spoken by the resurrected Jesus.

But I don’t think that this sort of event could happen in many places except Houston. Believe me, there's a lot of people who think we shouldn’t even be talking like this, but that’s what is so wonderful. This is a city that will allow this idea to be discussed, that has a church that's open to hosting it, and that has a strong artistic community to draw on.  

If you could change one thing about Houston…

Billboards. Our buildings are so beautiful, but the billboards just get in the way.

Who would be your own Inspiring Houston Woman?

Marian Sparks is a sky-diver who does an annual event – Jump for The Rose – to raise funds for us. But she is so much more than that. Marian was one of our sponsored women. She was divorced and as a result, she didn't have health insurance anymore. She got a mammogram paid for through the American Cancer Society, and when it came back with a problem, she came here to have her ultrasound and biopsy, and we got her into treatment. Since then, she has done her skydiving event once a year and so far she's raised more than $85,000 for us. I even tandem-jumped with her one year!

Marian’s life has been so full of challenges, but still she has this event for us so that we can take care of others. She is a very special woman, but her circumstances are typical of the women we see at The Rose. A woman lets her career slide when she has children, but then loses her health insurance because of a divorce. It’s tragic. We just never know what is going to change our lives in the blink of an eye.

For more information on Dorothy’s work at The Rose, or to make a donation, visit the website here.

For more information on The Many Faces of Mary Magdalene art event, visit the Brigid's Place website here.

If you would like to join in the Jump for the Rose, visit the website here.

Susan Fordice

Susan is the President and CEO of Mental Health America of Greater Houston.  Susan grew up in the Midwest and graduated from South Dakota with a degree in psychology. She resided in Los Angeles and Chicago before moving to Houston twenty years ago.  She worked in development at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University before joining Mental Health America, this area’s oldest mental health education and advocacy organization.  She works to change attitudes about mental health and mental illness and advocates for good public policy and access to the effective treatments that are available for mental disorders.  

Susan is married to Jim and has three daughters, a stepdaughter and a stepson.  She is the grandmother to ten grandchildren.

What’s your story, Susan?

I was born and raised in South Dakota and have lived in several Midwestern states.  After the end of a 14-year marriage, I changed my life in earnest and moved to Los Angeles.  The next stop was Chicago.  The opportunity to relocate to Texas came a few years later.  We heard the weather in Houston was “tropical” which suited us just fine.   

Most of my career had been in hospital development and fundraising, working with regional medical centers and medical schools.  My first employer in Houston was MD Anderson Cancer Center.  I will always be grateful for that experience, they are only the best in the world.  In the mid-1990s, I joined the development staff at Rice University and continued to travel nationally.  Assigned to bio-sciences, bio-engineering and nano-technology, I had the unique opportunity to know and work with Professor Rick Smalley following the awarding of the Nobel Prize. 

When I once again decided to make a major change in my life, I joined Mental Health America in the late 1990s.  I left a development office of more than one hundred staff members to become a shop of one.  Like so many of us working in nonprofits, I felt called to support something that was personal and in an area of great need.  Sixty years ago, Miss Ima Hogg founded MHA in Greater Houston to be a voice for people who had no voice.  It is such an honor to be here and continue this work.

Why do you do what you do?

Susan and her mother

I have generations of reasons to care about mental health. Without going back too many generations, I lost my mother at the age of 59 when she died from complications from alcoholism.  In fact, she suffered with major depression. Because of stigma, we never called her illness a mental illness.  I used to wonder how people died from alcoholism and, sadly, I found out.

I do think that if we had called her illness by its real name and treated it differently, she might have lived to enjoy her grandchildren and see her great grandchildren be born.  We all missed so much by her not being here.  That's not an uncommon story.  It is a story shared by many. 

Not surprisingly, I have my own story and I feel it’s immensely important to call it what it is.  In the mid-1990s, I was also dealing with depression.  Even with my family experiences, I didn’t realize it at the time.  Our family had experienced some difficulties and losses and I just thought that profound sadness was situational.  One day, I went to see a new internal medicine doctor for an annual medical and all of a sudden I was sobbing. I didn't see it coming, not a clue. After talking to me for a while, she said, “I think you are depressed,” which made me laugh.  She suggested I try a medication and if I didn’t feel better within two weeks, we would dig a little deeper.  Three days later, as I'm driving down 290, I suddenly said, “Oh my gosh! This is what normal feels like!”  I was absolutely euphoric just to realize that I felt normal.  I called her and said, “I am such a lightweight, it only took me three days!”

I have three beloved daughters.  They have six children and each generation has its own stories.  How they manage their challenges makes my heart soar.  The power and beauty of a family is in the love and support we can provide to one another.  By virtue of the work I do, I know and have heard from so many people who have struggles, so many.  We know they need understanding, support and proper treatment.  Treatment works.  Early intervention works.  We need better public policy and access to care for everyone in need.  It’s not just what we are all called to do as a caring community, it is a benefit to the community. It is more cost effective to help people recover their lives rather than cycle in and out of jail, shelters and emergency rooms.  It is really difficult to believe and absolutely impossible to accept that this still happens way too often.

The last legislative session was a good one for mental health.  There seems to be a realization that you can’t sweep mental health under the rug anymore.  We made progress, but there is much more to do.

An example of our current work is a school behavioral health initiative, which involves a large number of independent school districts in the area.  It can take as long as fourteen years for a diagnosis following the onset of symptoms.  Think about the difference in the trajectory of a child’s life, not to mention the reduction in suffering, if we identify kids earlier and they get the help they need.  Legislation from the past session will help make that a reality by providing training for teachers and administrators and also by adding training to recognize signs and symptoms of behavioral health problems in educator preparation programs.  Remember, there isn't a blood test for these illnesses and there is a lot of denial along the way.  These accomplishments were supported by a passionate and effective group of stakeholders, including teachers, counselors and nurses from our independent school districts, parents, grandparents, community organizations that serve children, advocates and others.  We need to support educators and make sure they have knowledge, tools and resources. 

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

Susan with her grandmother,
before the car accident which disabled her

That’s an easy one for me. As a young child, I spent several years living with my grandparents.  When I was five, my grandmother was in a horrible accident when their car skidded on ice.  Other people in the car were killed and my grandmother went through the windshield of the car. She had a traumatic brain injury which left her paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak.  They expected her to die so they let me in to see her to say good-bye. To everyone’s surprise, she survived and lived another seventeen years.  However, she lived in constant pain and had limited medical treatment for pain or for recovery.  Over the course of those seventeen years, the paralysis gradually improved leaving her paralyzed from the waist up on her right side and able to speak with the vocabulary of a very young child, though this followed many years of no mobility or ability to speak.    

We lived in a small town in South Dakota, population 400, with one doctor about thirteen miles away.  There were no social services, though neighbors did bring food for a while and visit.  We had never heard of physical therapy.  It’s difficult to recall, let alone describe.   

In all those years, never once did she ever complain. We knew when her pain was most severe because she would close the drapes and just lie on the sofa with an ice pack on her head. This was a woman who had every reason to withdraw from reality, yet she got up every day and gave that day her best.  If I had one grain of her strength and courage, I'd be something special.

We did have adventures when I got a little older and she was more mobile.  When I was fourteen, we had a Sunday morning ritual of watching the television ministry of Oral Roberts.  He healed people and at the end of his show would ask people at home to stand and hold up their right hand and ask to be healed.  I helped her with that hand every week.  We were so unsophisticated and we were looking for a miracle, so one day we ran away from home to go see Oral Roberts.  We waited until I was fourteen and could drive legally with my farm permit.  I had eight dollars in my pocket and I didn't read a map, so we stopped at every gas station and asked for directions.  Unfortunately we had a little fender-bender and my grandfather was called.  He had to come and lead us back home and we were in big trouble! 

Undaunted, we waited a couple of years and devised a new plan.  We had heard of the Mayo Clinic and it was only 250 miles from home.  Once again, with less than ten dollars in my pocket but a lot of hope in our hearts, we quietly slipped away.  When we went through the doors of the Mayo Clinic with no money and no insurance, they found a home for me to stay in and did a full assessment of my grandmother.  They told us about physical therapy, which would have been so much more helpful if done earlier.  They referred us to a physical therapist in a town fifty miles away from home, which we thought was just amazing.  Of course they had to call my grandfather and we were definitely in trouble again.  He told us to get home on our own, which we did just fine.   

What advice would you give to someone new to working in the mental health field?
Never compromise your integrity.  Never.  And treat others as you wish to be treated, which is just about as solid and simple as it gets.   When you have an opportunity to work with colleagues and other organizations, always be a good and generous partner.   Together we can have a greater impact so treat those relationships as a sacred trust.  Give more than you hope to get and forget about who gets the credit.  That is much easier in a good relationship.  Not so easy when you get burned, but you can’t let the bad experiences keep you from doing the right thing.  Be the good example for others even when it’s hard.

Susan with
Blake and Addie,
two of her ten grandchildren
 and with Rikr, her dog

How do you find balance in your life?

I love my job but my family is everything to me. I have three daughters, a stepdaughter and stepson. Plus I'm the grandmother of ten.  Six of my grandchildren live here and four in the Midwest. Every weekend gives me balance because nearly every weekend, I have time with my grandchildren.  The Houston grandkids range in age from 6 to 18, so our activities are very different.  We love going to the theater, musicals, movies, shopping, antiquing, football games, or we may just shoot baskets in the driveway.  If I’m really lucky, I will get some time with my busy daughters. 

I also love dogs and have a few, mostly rescues.  My favorite is a big, beautiful white German shepherd named Rikr. He's my shadow and follows me around the house.  My dogs make me laugh every day.  

What does Houston mean to you?

I came here with all the stereotypes of Texas in my head. I didn't know what to expect and I was just so surprised. Houston has the best of everything!  Some of it is so unusual – a house covered in beer cans and an art-car parade, yet we also have the best medical care in the whole world in our backyard.  People who have health challenges do their research and this is where they come.  I love the people.  Like where I come from, there are such wonderful characters.

I miss Southern California and there are things about growing in rural America that I miss, but I do love Houston.  I am not leaving.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

I love my backyard.  People sometimes ask me where I’m going on vacation and I'll say, “To my backyard.”  Also, my husband Jim and I go to Carrabba's every Friday night. With busy lives, it’s the one time when we actually get to catch up and have a real conversation. That it always our time.

What is your favorite restaurant?

I enjoy Carrabba’s and I love Pappadeaux’s, but can’t think of favorites without mentioning Paulie’s shortbread cookies.

What is your Houston secret?

One of the things I enjoy most is when the West Texas peaches appear in Houston. Being a Midwesterner, I've done a lot of canning and preserving in my life, but I have never had such a heavenly smell in my house before.  It’s such a treat to be able to give those little jars of jam as gifts and I absolutely love the sound of the lids popping when they seal to the jar.  

If you could change one thing about Houston…

When I moved here twenty years ago, I wondered, where are the trains? We had three different types of trains in Chicago to get you anywhere and everywhere.  I’ve now been commuting down 290 for twenty years, so I would love to see some trains or some diamond lanes at least.  I will never understand a barricaded HOV lane.  Really!  You get stuck there behind one of those smoke belching buses and think you’ve found a new hell.  The other thing I would change would be the air quality.

Susan was nominated as an Inspiring Houston Woman by Sarah Fisher.

To find out more about the work of Susan and her team at Mental Health America of Greater Houston, visit the MHA website.

Amy Weiss

Rabbi Amy Weiss is the founder and executive director of Undies for Everyone, a non-profit organization that distributes new underwear and socks to underprivileged students in Houston’s school districts.  She founded the Initiative for Jewish Women and serves on the Independent Police Oversight Board in Houston. She is the Director of Food and Nutrition for Houston Hillel, the campus organization for Jewish students, where her husband Rabbi Kenny Weiss is the executive director. She has two sons, Eli and Joshua.

What’s your story, Amy?

Ever since I was a child I wanted to have a house full of people.  As a rabbi, I meet so many people who are new to Houston – we called them strays – and we welcome them in.   That’s just so fulfilling to me. I became a rabbi to make Judaism more accessible, so it's not unusual for us to have fifty people for Passover in our house every year. I love making people happy and I love nurturing people. That's why I do all the cooking here at the Hillel. For example every Tuesday and Wednesday we do lunches here for the students.  A friend of mine and I bake cookies at the beginning of every semester and put them in the freezer so the kids have homemade cookies for every lunch, because they should feel comforted and nurtured.  I guess that I treat others like I would like to be treated.

Growing up in Dallas, I was very involved in my youth group and was a song leader, playing the guitar all over Texas and Oklahoma at conventions of hundreds of Jewish kids. After getting a degree in advertising from the University of Texas, my first job was selling advertising, but on the first day, literally the first day, I remember thinking this just isn't right for me.

Eventually I found myself involved with my synagogue again and the rabbi there took me under his wing.  He wanted me to become a rabbi and after getting my Masters in Jewish Education, I began the rabbinic program at Hebrew Union College in New York. On the last day of my first week, I met my husband Kenny who was there leading a teen trip. He came to my house for dinner and we've been together ever since. That was 1991. It seems like yesterday but at the same time it just seems like so far away.

In 1995, when we were living in Washington DC, our first son Aaron was born prematurely and died. Then, after having trouble getting pregnant again, we had Eli in 1997.  When Eli was eight months old we moved to Pennsylvania and since there nothing else to do I got pregnant again, but I lost that one. I got pregnant again and in 1999, we had Joshua.  Aaron, Eli and Joshua – you can tell we're rabbis, we're so biblical!

We moved to Houston in 2001 when Kenny got the chance to apply for the job at the Houston Hillel.  He just fell in love with it, so we moved here a year later.

Why do you do what you do?

Losing our first son, Aaron, really changed me. When Eli and Joshua were born, I figured if God is going to give me these children I’ve got to do something with them, I have to be there for them. I can't be a congregational rabbi and have two kids. Some people can do it but I can't.  So I started the Initiative for Jewish Women (IJW) and did that for seven years. I was programming for Jewish women, but the truth of the matter is that there's a zillion things for Jewish women to do and I after a while I found I couldn't differentiate myself.  

By 2008, I was also blogging for the Houston Chronicle’s religion section and around October time, when everyone was doing endless holiday toy drives for underprivileged children, a social worker said to me, “You know what these kids really need? Underwear and socks!”  So I blogged about it and people started dropping things off here.  I got a few hundred pairs and I talked to Waste Management to get boxes. I pulled together a committee and Undies for Everyone just sort of grew and grew from there.

Then last year, my dad died. So I stood back and re-evaluated my life, and I thought, “You know, the Jewish ladies don't need me as much as these kids need their tushies covered.” So I let the IJW go, and focused my energy on Undies for Everyone. I got some friends, filled out the paperwork and it is just unbelievable how fast it all developed.  In our fourth year, we gave out 10,000 pairs and this year we gave out somewhere between 33,000 and 38,000. We even had a donation from the man whose family owns the company which supplies Target with all the Disney and Marvel-type underwear.  They are Jewish so someone had given him our details and he sent us 43,000 pairs of underwear. Elyse, our board chair, and I flew to New York in October to meet him, so now we have a relationship with him and another company in New York. That's where we get the big stuff but also individual people or schools have underwear drives, where they ask everyone to bring one packet.

There are two parts to our organization. Obviously our first priority is about covering the kids who are disadvantaged, so there is the collection and distribution of mass quantities of underwear, but we also offer the opportunity to give to anyone who wants to do something for someone else.  Some people can write really large checks or even medium-size checks, and other people can go buy one packet of underwear.  Either way, they will know that they have changed someone's life and I think that changes their life too.
 

Our idea is also that we have to teach our kids how to give. A parent can use Undies for Everyone as an opportunity to take a kid to the store and say, “You have a whole drawer full of underwear and you take it for granted. But there are kids out there that don't have any underwear at all, and doesn’t most everyone deserve to have underwear?” Everyone can identify with that.  So let your kids pick a pack of underwear to give to someone else and that's the start of teaching those kids about being philanthropic and giving them the opportunity to repair the world.

Once we have all these undies, we distribute them in a number of ways. The City of Houston runs a Back-to-School event which pre-registers 25,000 kids in fifteen school districts. Each of them gets a wrist band which gets them a backpack and supplies, vaccinations, uniforms and even haircuts.  We, of course, give away underwear.  I think 15,000 pairs went there and another 10,000 pairs went to Houston Independent School District nurses, not only for the elementary schools where little kids have accidents but also to the middle school nurses who really love it because teenage girls are not regular yet in their cycles. We gave 3,000 to Fort Bend schools, 2,000 to Alief and to Waller and we will soon expand into charter schools and places like that.

For the future, we already have a trademark attorney and we are looking to go national within a few years. You know, it's God's work. This is not just about covering these kids’ privates, it is about dignity and self-esteem. It represents so much more for them, it’s about being like everyone else so they don’t have to worry about someone else finding out they aren’t wearing any.

Is there more to your story?

I don't blog for the Chronicle anymore but I do make mezuzahs out of Lego! And yes, that is extraordinary, but I am all about making Judaism accessible!  A mezuzah has a prayer in it and you put it on your door frame.  When I was growing up, people only put up one mezuzah, but in traditional Judaism, you're supposed to have one on every door in the house, except the bathroom and the laundry room. So for people who normally wouldn't put a mezuzah on their kid’s bedroom door, here's this really cool thing, and since everybody loves Lego, you're giving the kids an opportunity to connect. It's not scary, it's not old and it's not weird. It’s just really cool!

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

It's really hard to say because there have been a lot of people who have influenced me, but I think my husband is really the greatest influence.  He allows me every opportunity to be successful. I worry a lot and it can be paralyzing and he just doesn't let that happen. He doesn't let difficulties or worry stop him. He will do anything to give me an opportunity to shine and he has just been the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s an awesome, awesome guy.

What advice would you give to someone who sees a need in the community and thinks they have something that can help fill that need?
Go talk to lots of people and make sure that need isn't being filled by someone else.  If you want to succeed and you want to make a difference, you have to know that you are doing something different from all the many other non-profits in Houston. Otherwise you are not going to get funded and you're not going to get people on board. The other thing I would say is take Rice University's Leadership Institute for Non-profit Executives course which has been phenomenal. It's a one year course and I have met some of the greatest people. I've just loved it.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

You know I’ve given that a lot of thought and I don't think there really is balance. My family comes first and everything else comes after. There are always things to do, including this job, so that I can be there for the kids and for Kenny, because the home is the center of it. Everything else just fills in around it. I have also just accepted that I'm not going to be able to do everything fabulously.

What does Houston mean to you?

It is so clichéd, but I think Houston is the city of opportunity. It is a really diverse city, in thinking and believing, with lots of different religions, but ultimately so many people do so much work for Houston to make it a better place. It's just amazing.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

It’s the swing on our front lawn at home. It hangs from a tree and sometimes Kenny and I will sit there and just hang out, throwing a ball for the dog. But really, wherever I am, if I have my family and my friends near, I'm okay. As long as the food's good!

What is your favorite place to eat?

Our go-to place is India’s, on Richmond, which is really good. It's from the 80s or the 70s, it has commercial carpet but the food is great and the people are so nice. It’s so quiet, you can go on Saturday night with another couple and have a conversation and some really good food.

What is your Houston secret?

The Chocolate Cinnamon Shake at Goode Company Taqueria! It's not even a milkshake really, more like soft serve ice-cream. In fact, they don't even serve it with a straw. I don't know if it's actually a kids’ thing though because it has quite a cinnamon bite to it. It's awesome!

If you could change one thing about Houston…

The weather or the potholes! The weather because I'm not good at sweating. And the potholes? I think the tire people go out at night to dig them.

For more information about Amy’s work at Undies for Everyone, click here. 

To see Amy’s Lego mezuzahs, click here.  

For more information about the Rice University Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives, click here.