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About the episode:
In this episode of In the Thick of It, Scott has a heartfelt conversation with Jennifer Salzman, founder and executive director of The Heights of Ellis County, a nonprofit providing critical services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse.
Jennifer shares the powerful story behind starting this organization in 2018 at the encouragement of her father, despite having no prior nonprofit experience. She candidly opens up about overcoming self-doubt and evolving into her leadership role, as well as the lessons she’s learned about surrounding herself with wise counsel, embracing collaboration, and creating hope.
Scott and Jennifer discuss the weight of this mission balanced with the motivation to empower survivors, break generational cycles, and expand the impact of this model. Jennifer also provides perspective on the challenges faced by nonprofits, from funding limitations to being on call 24/7 as the founder. Throughout the conversation, Jennifer’s humility, empathy and passion shine through. This is a must-listen episode for any founder or nonprofit leader.
About Jennifer:
In this episode of In the Thick of It, Scott has a heartfelt conversation with Jennifer Salzman, founder and executive director of The Heights of Ellis County, a nonprofit providing critical services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse.
Jennifer shares the powerful story behind starting this organization in 2018 at the encouragement of her father, despite having no prior nonprofit experience. She candidly opens up about overcoming self-doubt and evolving into her leadership role, as well as the lessons she’s learned about surrounding herself with wise counsel, embracing collaboration, and creating hope.
Scott and Jennifer discuss the weight of this mission balanced with the motivation to empower survivors, break generational cycles, and expand the impact of this model. Jennifer also provides perspective on the challenges faced by nonprofits, from funding limitations to being on call 24/7 as the founder. Throughout the conversation, Jennifer’s humility, empathy and passion shine through. This is a must-listen episode for any founder or nonprofit leader.
About Jennifer:
Jennifer Salzman is the founder and executive director of The Heights of Ellis County, a nonprofit she started in 2018 to support victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse. Despite having no prior experience running a nonprofit, Jennifer stepped up to turn her vision into reality after encouragement from her father. She now leads a growing organization that runs a family justice center and provides wraparound services focused on breaking cycles of violence. Jennifer earned her bachelor's degree in marketing from Texas Christian University. Though the path has involved overcoming self-doubt, she feels humbled and passionate about creating hope and helping families in need.
About The Heights:
The Heights of Ellis County is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2018 and based in Waxahachie, Texas. It operates a family justice center that brings together community partners to provide wraparound services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. The Heights serves all of Ellis County through free and confidential services including counseling, legal aid, medical exams, shelter placement, and more. By streamlining access to these vital resources, The Heights aims to create hope, empower survivors, and break generational cycles of violence. With community support it continues to expand its services and impact.
To learn more, visit theheightselliscounty.org.
Creators & Guests
What is In The Thick of It?
Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.
It went from a project to a full
passion, and I didn't see it coming. Right.
So this wasn't in a like,
sometimes entrepreneurs have a "Man,
this has been brewing in my brain for years and
decades, and then I'm going to go do this."
This opportunity presented itself to me, and I
am overwhelmingly humbled all the time to be
in the role that I'm in.
Six welcome to In the Thick of It.
I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.
On today's episode of In the Thick of It,
I speak with Jennifer Salzman, founder of
The Heights of Ellis County, a nonprofit near
and dear to her heart that provides critical
support services for victims of domestic abuse.
Jennifer candidly shares the story behind
starting this organization in 2018.
Despite having no prior nonprofit experience, she
opens up about the personal lessons learned
on her journey from battling self doubt
to embracing collaboration and hopeful progress.
I'm moved by the passion jennifer exudes
as she discusses both the heavyweight and
enduring hope central to her nonprofit's mission.
Keep listening to learn from her entrepreneurial
journey and for more information about how
you can help her cause.
Jennifer, thank you so much for driving up here and
being a guest on in the thick of it.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
First thing we like to do is
just kind of get some background.
So tell us, where did you grow up?
Yeah, so I am originally from the dallas area, lived
south of dallas my whole life and grew up here
and went to college on the fourth side of town.
Go Frogs! And yeah, really just married my high school
sweetheart, and we started our family just south of
Fort Worth and lived there for almost a decade.
And my husband is a police officer, and
we have two boys who are now grown.
I've got one in college and one in high school, and
we have since moved over back on kind of the east
side of the metroplex in our south of Dallas now.
Okay, growing up, what were you like as a kid?
What kinds of things were you into?
Were you in sports?
Were you studious?
Yeah, I was not in sports.
That was definitely out of my realm.
I was a little more reserved.
I don't know if shy is the
term, but kind of kept to myself.
Went to public school through about middle school and then
switched to private school, and that was a huge adjustment,
but really significant, actually, in my life because it just
changed my work ethic and what I needed to do
and kind of helped ground me a little more.
So that was really nice.
And yeah.
Come brothers and sisters or were you an only child?
I have two older sisters.
My parents are still together.
They're cute as can be, and I'm the youngest
of the three girls, and yeah, so they're four
years older and seven years older than I am.
College went to TCU.
What did you study?
I went for business.
When I went, I really did not
know exactly what I wanted to do.
I wanted to pursue kind of my
dad's track in life of entrepreneur business.
That sounded glamorous.
And then when I got there, I kind of
fell in love with the marketing branding side of
things and did a little bit of focus on
some supply chain management that was really intriguing to
me, the processing and management of that.
And I still just love all things marketing.
My brain is wired that way, so I really enjoyed that.
You mentioned your dad was an entrepreneur.
What was that like?
What kind of work did he do and has that
had any influence on you and what you're doing today?
Yeah, extreme influence.
My dad is probably my most admired person,
my hero, and I just can't say enough.
He's just such a remarkable human, and he has
been an entrepreneur ever since I was born.
Our family owns a cabinet company, and so
we manufacture from raw lumber through end of
the process kitchen and bath cabinetry, and we
sell to builders and distributors.
So my whole life he was in business building mode.
I grew up with that around me constantly.
I got to see what that looked like to kind
of carry the burden of being an entrepreneur and managing
the new business and your family and watched him go
through a bankruptcy and several recessions and have seen the
challenges that come with that and has definitely now impacted
me as an adult and what I'm doing today.
It's interesting.
Some of the guests we've had grew up with entrepreneurial
families, and others, like, it was just in them, and
it's interesting to see what people do with that.
All right, so you studied business in college and
what did you go do right after school?
Well, I found out two weeks after I graduated.
Granted I was married, but I was
expecting, and so it thrust me into
that parenthood season of life very early.
My husband and I got married very early in college.
We had been together over two years, married before then,
so I really did not launch out into the business
world when I left college, which was the plan originally,
and Pivoted and I spent a good majority of the
next decade or plus being a mom, staying home.
My husband, like I said, is police officer.
And so really adjusting to that life of
being a parent and starting this new family
and adjusting to his volatile schedule.
And I would do OD and end jobs here
and there just really for the entertainment of it
and keeping me going, encouraged and enjoying life and
probably maybe a decade or more into parenting.
I started picking up a little extra work with
our family business, doing some marketing and going back
to kind of my roots of schooling to be
able to use some of that just for my
own creative outlet and to get involved with the
family business that going all the way through college.
Oh, wow, I'm pregnant.
Was not expecting this.
What was going through your mind?
It sounds like you really wanted to use the things that
you had learned and go out into the working world.
It was definitely an interesting shift in direction,
one that I wasn't completely derailed by because
I knew I wanted to be a mom.
I knew I wanted a family.
I just didn't know the timing of that.
The Lord knew the timing of that, which has been
great now because I'm able to do what I'm doing.
And my kids are at a different season
of life at the age I'm at.
And so I'm able now to do a lot more indifferently than I
would be if I was in a season as a new parent.
And now I'm more at the kind of tail end
of empty nesting stage, still being barely just over 40.
So it's great.
Thinking about your last semester of
school, what was the dream job?
What were you planning to go do right out of school?
I didn't have a specific plan.
I'm a fairly creative person in general, and
so I've always, at each stage and season
of my life, needed creative outlets.
And so I think my hope was really
to go find something that I was passionate
about and get involved with marketing and branding.
What I just had no idea is that would
be the season of life I'm in now.
It's interesting how we don't realize things that are
foundational until later in life, and it sounds like
that's kind of where you're at right now. Absolutely.
So true.
Graduate college, have your first child,
ten years, stay at home mom.
What happened after that?
Ten year mark? Yeah.
So both of our parents, my parents and my in laws ended
up locating south of Dallas together, and so it didn't exactly make
sense for us to be so far away from them.
Having that support system and the drive between
where we lived and being closer to them
was pretty similar for my husband.
So we made that move, and it really just
created in me the ability to step into that
next season of life, if that makes sense.
So that was a good move for us.
And then I didn't intend on
transitioning into working, starting a career.
It's interesting because I didn't really have a career
to go back to because I started so early,
but I kind of fell into this particular job.
Life circumstances in my family have been pretty
extreme, and my mom, growing up had a
really challenging childhood, and she dealt with domestic
abuse issues as a child.
And for me, that created a lens in life, that
I was the daughter of someone who had been through
this type of traumatic abuse and had never processed it,
but it was very fluid for me.
And so it was in my everyday life.
It was a part of conversation and
I didn't really know any different.
And so moving over and getting closer to my
parents and family kind of drew that in more.
And I've got a good close relationship with my sisters,
but my oldest sister, somewhere along the line, finally revealed
to us what they were dealing with and the domestic
issue that was going on in their home.
And things went from bad to worse and unraveled.
And really, that is where my shift in life and
getting back into a career minded work world began.
And there's definitely more to the story
I'll share with you, but that's kind
of where that shift happened for me.
It's always interesting to hear about what people
do, but the why behind what they do,
I think is probably even more important.
And so we'll transition a little bit more here
in just a second into what The Heights does.
But I think it's safe to say that
you're doing what you're doing today because of
situations that have really impacted you and your
family very personally, 100% accurate.
Having to experience domestic abuse even at a distance,
I'm not having to firsthand go through it, but
being the child of somebody who went through it,
and it's not something that you just get over.
And then really walking alongside my sister and
her family, it was really eye opening.
What I know now is it impacts everybody equally.
It doesn't matter your race or socioeconomic status.
And so even in my own naive thinking, I'm like,
oh, things like this don't happen to people like us.
That's just kind of a basic common thought.
And then I'm like, man, that's so not true at all.
And now I'm discovering how untrue that actually is.
And it happens to anybody, everybody.
It's very nondiscriminatory, to say the least.
And so I really think just that specific situation
with my sister's family was so raw and so
brutal and so eye opening that there's hardly any
way I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now,
having walked that journey with them.
So talk a little bit more about what
The Heights is and what you do.
Yeah, so The Heights is a nonprofit
focused on families dealing with abuse.
And it really, for lack of better terms, is a one
stop shop where these families can go and get all the
resources they need in one location to help reduce how difficult
it is, how many barriers they have to face.
We did a very simple survey with some survivors in
my county specific, and there was somewhere between 15 and
20 different services locations that they would need to go
to be able to get out of this situation.
And that's too many.
I mean, it's too difficult.
It's already challenging.
And so if you don't have somebody who's walking
that journey with you, how do you do this.
And so the Heights really is this multiple agency
who's kind of bringing all of those together.
The great thing I love about it is
we're a part of a national alliance.
So the alliance for Hope International started in
San Diego out of a district attorney's office
who saw this need that these families needed,
long term care wraparound services.
And they got featured on Oprah, and
it got seen by George W.
Bush, and it became a presidential initiative.
And out of that initiative, texas received
the first family Justice Center in San
Antonio and then in Tarrant County.
One Safe Place became the second family justice
center, and the Heights became the third.
And since then, we now have three additional family justice
centers in Texas and a couple more in development.
And it's been an amazing network to
be a part of, because this isn't
something that Jennifer Salzman is creating.
This isn't something that we're trying to figure out.
This is something that the best practice that's
being done around the world, because I think
there's at least one family justice center in
about 25 different countries now.
And so we're looking across the globe and
saying, what is the best practice to provide
a resource center that draws these services together?
And so it's been really amazing to
be a part of that journey.
But to have that resource and that kind of
tool to really help these families, we are ultimately
trying to guide them to safety and hope.
And how do you do that if you
don't do it in this collaborative effort?
It's nice to know that you're not alone.
And one of the things that has come up time and
time again with other guests is almost everybody has had a
mentor of sorts or some kind of support system.
And it sounds like you get at least one of those,
if not both, with being a part of the alliance.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a wealth of mentorship resources.
I don't exactly even know how I would begin
to navigate without kind of having that support system.
So I'm incredibly grateful.
You didn't have to start from scratch.
Yes, thank goodness. Yeah.
You talked about 20 different places
that somebody would need to go.
I got to believe that as many physical needs as
people have in a situation like that that need to
be met, there's a lot of emotional needs.
So many.
So many.
We have taken on hiring a full time licensed counselor.
That's a critical component and one of those
that we could try to outsource because there's
a fair amount of counselors around most communities.
Actually, the hard challenges
are availability and affordability.
And one thing that we know is when a
survivor gets the courage to finally leave, a, it's
the most dangerous point, and B, they can't wait.
They don't need to be on a waitlist.
They don't need to not be able to afford it.
And so that's one thing we really took
on because the mental, emotional aspects of domestic
abuse are huge, I would say.
And this is just in my opinion, but
a majority of the clients are not mentally,
emotionally at a place where they even accept,
acknowledge and understand the cycle that they're in.
And so for us, when we do
an intake, it's an educational piece.
And then once they've kind of seen that
education, what do you do with it?
How do you process that?
So having a licensed counselor to talk to is critical.
And ours can do both adults and children, which is
nice play therapy, things that kids need as well.
And then also we have a chaplain who does spiritual
support because this is such a huge, complicated, emotional, just
draining issue to have someone to fall back on, even
in that sense of I need to talk and process
this even further than my counseling session.
So we've been really grateful to have those resources.
What other kinds of services do you guys provide?
So when a client comes to the
heights, we do a full intake first.
And that intake's really significant because
it is that learning process.
But what it also tells us, we do a
risk assessment, and that is from John Hopkins University.
And it's a tool that has been
researched by thousands of families who have
experienced domestic violence, homicide, and interviewing perpetrators
as well as the victim's families.
And it gives us an understanding of the
gravity of the danger that this situation entails.
And so from that, we're able to give them a
safety plan and we kind of know a little bit
more insight to the risk they're dealing with.
And so we tailor each one of those
safety plans specific for each situation, and then
we also create a service plan.
And that's really your long term trajectory.
We talk about the science of hope so much
at the alliance, and we really dig into that.
Hope is setting a goal, creating a pathway
and having the motivation to do that.
Well, we're trying to come alongside in this service plan
and help you create that pathway and then surround you
with these services that are cheering you on to give
you the motivation to help actually do it.
But it has to be self motivated.
This is their story, their journey.
We're just here to help.
But some of the resources they can find at
our center, specifically, we've got a LS Christian Women
Job Corps that is partnered with us.
So any of those skills they lack, we can help fill some
of those needs, giving them the tools to be able to go
get a job that they need, be able to help them write
a resume, things like when they go to court.
We have a court etiquette class that they
offer to help prepare you for that.
And we're actually building a
mock courtroom into our center.
So that way court is one
of the scariest places people go.
And that's not just victims.
That's for advocates, law
enforcement, legal professionals.
And there's not really a courtroom that's
like, oh yeah, here come practice here.
So for us to be able to have that
space and walk alongside them is really important.
The other cool thing is we have
a whole salon and boutique there.
So you can even go into that courtroom, practice, come
back out, get made over, get a new outfit and
help them build some of that confidence back.
And then we go back into that
courtroom and let's talk about it again. Right?
And so surrounding them with some support to help them,
and then we even will accompany them to court.
Some other services.
We talked about the counseling and
chaplain services, our case managers.
I'm really incredibly excited.
One of our the only mental health clinic
actually in Ellis County is moving on site
with us, which is really key.
I think the mental health conversation is so
prevalent right now, which I appreciate because there
shouldn't be a stigma to if you're struggling
and when you're going through trauma.
A mental emotional struggle is
a natural outcome of trauma.
It shouldn't be an added stigma, an added burden.
And so for us to be able to provide that at
no cost that they can work with a mental health professional
and get if they need medication, they have that option.
If they need more counseling that's specific to certain
aspects of their trauma, we have that available.
So I'm really grateful for that.
We also are putting in some childcare areas.
So that way if we offer support group classes,
we can offer childcare at the same time.
How do they handle what do you do with your kids
when you need to go to this training or this class?
So we're gathering all those components.
We've got some grants out that hopefully will
add some extra things like legal services.
I do have a commitment with law enforcement.
That way they don't have to go to the police station.
They can come to the facility and meet them.
It's super scary sometimes to walk to
the police station, especially for kids.
So to reduce that and have that on site.
One of our other partners I'm really grateful
for is our local food banks have committed
to putting a pantry on site.
If you need food, we want you to be able
to immediately go in, get that need met and leave
feeling like you've got one less burden on you.
Something that our county does not
have today is an emergency shelter.
And so that's another component of this resource
center that we are going to be building
an emergency shelter at an undisclosed location.
But that way we can meet those services at
the resource center, get all of the things they
need and then get them into emergency shelter.
And we have some pretty great
partnerships with transitional housing for what
do they do after emergency shelter.
So trying to get all of those resources as many
as we can, and really my heart and mind are
completely open to who needs to be there and why.
We've got an organization called Soul Flight.
They will walk alongside anyone
dealing with substance use.
We don't need to condemn or judge someone if
they've turned to a substance as a coping mechanism
because of the abuse and trauma they're with.
We have to meet them where
they're at and really help them.
And so how do you do that if you don't have
a program that's going to wrap around them and walk alongside?
So I'm really grateful for that program as well.
So I'm just trying to think of all
the little things that we can combine together.
I mean, we even have a foster pet partner.
Hearts and Tails of Hope is sitting into if a
family comes to emergency shelter and they have a pet,
we're not set up with a whole kennel.
I would love to grow to that one day.
But we can find a family who will foster
their pet for a couple of weeks while they're
in emergency shelter until we can get them back
somewhere where they can be reunited with their pet.
That's an important part of your support system
and it's one that is easily kind of
dismissed, but especially for kids dealing with this,
you're changing and rocking their whole world.
And so how do you reduce some
of that trauma they're going through?
That's really what our goal is to
continue those services as best we can.
Just hearing you talk through that, I think
mentally I knew how complex of a situation
it is you're dealing with when you're trying
to help somebody get out of that situation.
But there are so many things I didn't even think about.
Like, I hadn't even thought about what happens when
somebody needs a place but they've got a pet.
And I would have never thought about that.
The other thing that I was thinking through is I'm under
the impression that a lot of people that are in these
abusive situations endure it for a while before they actually go
get help and helping them get out of that.
Forget just the initial triage, but trying
to help them get out of that.
You talked about.
We've got the emotional side that needs
to be dealt with for some people.
There's a spiritual component, there's many, many physical needs,
but you got to get a job and you
got to be prepared to go to court.
What are some other things that
keep people from breaking free?
Yeah, I mean, what you're addressing
right now is those barriers.
And I don't know if you realize the statistics, but
on average it takes a survivor seven times leaving and
going back before they actually leave and get out.
And it's so simple to feel anybody, even
myself sometimes, to feel that caution of judgment
of like, just leave, just go.
And until you're in that situation, you
can't even understand the barriers and pressure.
And so, I mean, financial barrier is huge.
What do you do?
What do you do if you've been part of
this cycle of violence, is intentionally manipulating and isolating.
And so, so often what we find is the victim
has lost their entire support system as part of the
cycle of abuse, and they didn't see it happen.
It's just that little component of, oh, you don't need
to work, you need to stay home with kids.
I'm going to take care of you.
It's fine, I've got this.
No, I don't like their influence.
You shouldn't be talking to them.
They cause this or that, and you
start backing away from your support system.
They caused rifts between you and your family.
And all of a sudden, so you wake
up one day and without ever realizing it,
you've lost your support system, you lost your
infrastructure, and you've probably lost your income already.
And so then you really feel trapped.
What do you do?
A lot of them have their car repossessed.
Well, now, how do you even literally leave, physically
leave, let alone how do you even afford leaving?
It's so much more complex than you realize.
And until you actually walk the road, it's just
not something you put your mind on a lot.
And I think that's really for me.
What drew me to this personally is
walking alongside my sister and her family.
And, I mean, it was the most kind of
spiritual warfare type of thing I'd ever experienced.
Their divorce case took four years.
I mean, it should not take four years, but
every little thing that could come at our family
or anyone surrounding this issue, it happened.
I mean, her lawyer broke his
jaw the night before testifying.
It postponed it another six months.
And then you compound abuse with traumatic experiences in
my family and how I personally really got called
to this position as part of that process.
We unfortunately lost my 15 year old
nephew, and that's their middle child.
They had three biological sons and adopted two
girls and nothing to do with the abuse.
It was a tragic accident.
But I sat in the hospital that night
with this insane scene swirling around me, and
I'm just like, how do families do this?
Law enforcement is coming in to do an investigation.
You've got Perpetrator and his family because it's
a child on their side as well.
And they're technically not supposed to be around all
these other kids and all this is happening.
And I just was like, it's too complicated.
So even me, who I was not firsthand experiencing it.
I was like, it feels impossible
for families to navigate this.
And what I didn't have the language then, but I do
now, is the Lord turned me into a case manager that
night and opened my eyes to how messy and complicated these
issues are and the degree and level that you have to
wait in to be able to navigate out.
And so that, for me, personally drew me
to become the executive director of the Heights.
And at that point, I didn't even see that right.
So it was just my experience, my eye opening to it.
So it takes that walking through those
journeys to realize the depth of it.
It's a difficult, crazy issue that
you just never see coming.
But it's a process even for the people on the
exterior of the situation, an emotional, a learning, an education
to figure out how do you get out of this?
You have to even recognize you're in it.
It's just so difficult.
You mentioned a statistic a minute ago that it
takes seven times leaving a few weeks back.
There were some other stats that you
had shared, and I may have misremembered.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but it was
something to the effect of the rate of domestic
violence is the same across race, across socioeconomics geography.
It doesn't matter.
The rate at which this happens
is equal across the board. Yeah, you're right.
It's the most eerie statistic I've ever seen
of how equal domestic abuse affects society.
And it does not matter. You're right.
Your race, your socioeconomic status, it's so easy
to think, oh, well, people who live in
poverty or people who don't have this.
And it's the furthest from the truth,
which makes providing services out of a
resource center a little interestingly, complex, because
you're dealing with every race.
You're dealing with every socioeconomic status.
And so the importance of
individualizing services is critical.
We literally need to meet you wherever you're at.
It doesn't matter if you
have nothing and have everything.
You're still going through trauma and tragedy and
all of these things that you need resources,
you need people to help you.
And so it's a very strange statistic, but it
just almost creates such a humanity aspect of serving
in this space because you are literally impacting everybody.
And the other statistics that kind of blow my mind.
One in three women experience intimate partner violence in
their lifetime, and one in four men experience it.
What we see is not many men will
come forth and disclose they're experiencing it.
That doesn't mean they don't need services.
We have to build a lot of awareness and
education around it's okay to ask for help, but
those are big numbers when you think about it.
The other statistic that literally unnerves me and
I have a very hard time grappling with
is three out of four kids repeat intimate
partner violence in their lifetime.
And for me, after going through the tragedy with
my sister in her situation, and after losing my
nephew, I'm looking at these four kids going, three
out of four of you are on a trajectory
to repeat intimate partner violence in your life.
That's a tsunami statistic coming at. US.
And so part of this resource center is waiting
really deep into the next generation of this issue.
How do we provide extremely excellent services
for children who are witnessing it now?
I will say we have an incredible child advocacy center.
They're amazing.
And they work with those families
whose kids have been directly impacted.
And so we want to support them
and do whatever partnering we can.
But that is their specialty, and we
want them to be in that lane.
What we want to make sure that we care about
and cover are the kids that are witnessing that don't
have a firsthand direct outcry of abuse toward them.
They're still experiencing it, they're still living with it in
their home and what are the services they need?
And so I've been really proud of our resource
center expanding into children's programming this last year.
We have several different year round
things that they can attend.
And we just added our Camp Hope program.
So Camp Hope America is a national
program that is partnered with our alliance,
our alliance for Hope International.
And so we were privileged to get a grant fund
last year to do kind of a readiness program.
And we spent a year learning how to provide children's
services and how to take these kids to camp and
weighed into a very intentional programming for trauma camp.
And so traditionally, I think a lot of
society thinks of camp as like, youth group.
And we went to summer camp, which
is great, and those are wonderful.
This camp has a lot of similarities.
However, there's some really important, significant
components of teaching coping skills.
We do mindfulness every morning so that
we are teaching practical applications for.
How do you calm yourself when
things are out of control?
What do you control?
You control your breathing, your
thoughts, your emotion, your anxiety.
And how do you actually
reduce your heart level increasing?
What are those grounding techniques?
How do you use your five senses to ground yourself?
And then we put them in
situations where we induce those anxieties.
We do high adventure ropes course ziplining things that
putting them up on a power pole that they
have to try to learn to overcome.
And it helps regulate that response, that
trauma response, and gives them a way
to do something about it for themselves.
And then we do these kind of hook activities
with them that really just helps us learn.
What are they good at, what are their strengths,
who are they, who are they created to be?
And we get to observe them over the week and use that.
We go through Hope Heroes that are like kids.
I say kids, they're young adults who have gone
through trauma themselves but have overcome those adversities.
And we dig into their lives and give them
some people to be inspired by, to think they're
not alone, there's other people dealing with this.
And then every night we gather under the stars,
and we really praise them and cheer them on,
and we give them character awards that we have
seen them exhibit this week and speak that into
them because we're trying to get them to set
goals and create pathways and cheer them on.
You've got to teach those things.
And these are a lot of kids that I don't
want to say fall through the cracks, but just don't
draw the attention that some other kids might.
And so how do you really help them
become who they are and stop that cycle? Right?
So how do we identify that?
And so I love that there's a huge focus
on digging into the next generation of this issue,
because if you don't do that, we've missed it.
I'm blown away at the number
of different things that you do.
How big is your team?
How do you pull this off?
It's very challenging right now.
There's like, six of us.
You start small, you dream big.
You do all of that with six people.
We have partner agencies, thank goodness.
We're very grateful for it.
But yes, we wear a lot of hats as funding comes in, as
we are able to grow, our team will be able to expand.
But those partnerships are critical for those reasons,
because we couldn't do it without it.
We have to have I mean, even down to
going to camp, thankfully, we had incredible volunteers.
We took 26 staff to go with 47 kids, and we
partnered that with our local camp, and they came to the
table and helped provide staffing to run camp and meet us.
So we couldn't have done it without them.
It's amazing and similar in some of our other
programming, having the Job Corps, having our mental health
clinic, that's bringing additional people to the cause with
not necessarily being at my operating budget entirely.
I do love the model for these family justice centers.
Our multi agency centers is you don't pay to play.
So when a partner comes and offices with us,
we're not charging them lease, we're not charging them
the overhead cost, but we are expecting them to
provide services at no cost to clients.
So what we want is their operating budgets and their
staff for all of their funding to go into services.
So it's a really cool model, and like I
said, I love that this isn't something I created,
so it's not like, oh, I hope this works.
It's like, no, this is the best
practice across the world that's happening.
And I can appreciate the people that have gone before
and laid out this foundation of how to do this.
I'm so grateful for that because yeah, how do you start
with I mean, when we first started, there were two of
us, and we've now grown to six, so I'm very thankful.
Hopefully in the next calendar year, we'll double that.
I want to dig more into getting it started.
And there was something you said a minute ago.
And by the way, you've shared some
deeply personal things about your family.
Thank you for your vulnerability.
And again, I just think that that's powerful part of
your story and why you do what you do.
You talked about being in the hospital that night that
you lost your nephew, and you said something to the
effect of you became a case worker at that moment.
I think you'd said earlier that your mom was pretty
open about her story, and so probably from a young
age, you knew about what she had been through.
Was it ever in the back of your mind growing up
or into adulthood, that this is something that you might do?
Never crossed my mind.
It's very interesting how you journey through life, because
I think that's something that has caused me to
feel passionate about building awareness is because I felt
so unaware and it was so prevalent in my
world and how could I be so unaware, right?
How could I be naive to this issue?
When my mom did experience as a
child, it was very fluid language, but
I just never processed anything beyond that.
And so to realize how many people
are impacted, it's a huge calling.
I don't know, it's real hard to kind of connect the
two because it's almost, in a way, I'm like, how was
I so unaware of what could be going on?
And then I'm just so thankful at this
point now that because I do have some
awareness, it has helped me see people differently.
It's helped me have more empathy, and I've been
a fairly empathetic person my whole life, but it's
caused me to go deeper and see people even
differently than I had before, if that makes sense.
One of our other guests, also in the nonprofit
world, told the story about when he knew that
this was what he was supposed to do.
And I'm not going to get it.
All right, but he talked about being in this moment where
the idea was just building as he was working on something,
and he just knew that he was in his sweet spot
and he was energized and fueled by this idea.
And I gather that you probably have had
or have a similar feeling, like you're operating
right where you're supposed to be.
Yeah, I definitely have that feeling now.
I think there's been a few interesting moments
in time that have given me confidence and
assurance that I'm on the right path.
When I very first started this, our family knew
we wanted to do more, and our original idea
was let's go renovate the shelter in Ellis County.
We had put cabinets in several different women's
centers and shelters, and that was literally just
our next step of giving back.
Sounds like your family has a heart of generosity.
That was something that was probably
ingrained in you as a kid. Yeah, definitely.
That's been from my dad's leadership, my
whole life that I can remember.
And so I'm really grateful for that.
And it was interesting because, you know,
hey, we just moved to Ellis County.
I'm trying to figure out, working again, maybe
I'll take on this job of renovating.
And what I began to do
was get involved in the community.
I spent about almost 18 months just listening
and learning who's doing what, what's happening here.
And it got me plugged in.
And what I learned really quickly was, we don't
have an emergency shelter that I can even renovate.
So that was shocking.
And I was like, so our plan is not going to work.
So then our conversation turned to, if we don't
have one, and our family has experienced this, what
if we were not here as a support system?
What would they have done?
So then it was like, well, should we build a shelter?
And so the next step of that, my husband being
law enforcement, he said, look, you got to come over
to Tarrant County and see one safe place.
You just come see it.
And I really did not know what I was
walking into, but walking in there and seeing all
these wraparound services in this one building, that moment
in time was very that first step.
And I say first step because I spent
that entire tour going, when we hire an
executive director, we could do this, this.
And I chuckle now because I not knowing
you were going to be the executive director.
I did not know, but their executive
director there knew it the entire trip.
She was like, this is you.
This is you.
You can't hire somebody.
This is you.
It's not going to work if it's not you.
You have the passion for this.
You have the vision, the face to be in the community.
And she saw in me what I couldn't see yet.
I didn't know that, and she could see that.
And now, four years in, I'm starting to
be able to see that in other people
differently than I could have in myself.
And so now I'm starting to catch where that came from.
But that was a very significant turning point for me
of going over there and seeing that and then coming
back to our community, coming back to my family really
first, and saying, yes, we need to build a shelter.
But what I learned over here is if we only build
a shelter, we've missed 85% of the families in need.
Statistics show us that at the family justice centers,
about 15% of the families need emergency shelter.
So we can't ignore that.
But 85% of them have somewhere that they've friends
or family or their back on their feet already,
but they still need all those other services.
So I was like, man, we don't want to miss the boat here.
We want to do this.
So then that became, okay, we're
going to do this big thing.
And when I finally started settling into my role and
that I've got to help launch and lead this.
And accepting that really did not happen until we
made a decision again at my dad's leadership, he
said, I'm willing to help be this support system
for this, put our family backing.
We're going to use our family business
to help get this thing going.
He said, I don't want our name on it.
I don't need any of that.
He said, if you're willing to give your time and
take on this position, we'll stay the course with it.
But we'll only do it if the county adopts it as
a pillar initiative that's going to outlast any of us.
That 100 years from now when someone in
Ellis County needs shelter or needs help getting
out of a situation, this organization still exists.
And I was like, yeah, I agree with that.
So going to the initial meeting where we gathered a
diverse group of the county to sit down and launch
this and getting up and launching this idea, I sat
in that room and that was this point of like,
wow, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
And from that point on, over the last four
years, there has been affirmation after affirmation that I
am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
I'm in the lane I'm supposed to be in.
And then it dug even deeper for me when my
husband, as law enforcement, had an opportunity to work out
of the Family Justice Center in Tarrant County.
And so now today, you take my passion for
building a family justice center in a community just
outside of the pre existing one in the Metroplex,
and then you take my spouse, who now sits
as the lieutenant there over family violence, crimes against
children, human trafficking, sex offender registration, and sexual assault.
And you married our passions in our world.
And that for me, is this sweet spot
of knowing it's this culmination of everything.
Yes, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, and
for more reasons than just a narrow, like, oh,
yes, you're supposed to do this, but holistically the
impact on my personal family, my family at large,
looking at how to change the course of my
nieces and nephews and the impact of this community.
So it's really cool to look back and
see how I got to where I got
in all those little affirmations along the way.
You see some tragic situations, I'm sure.
I think about doctors and nurses that work
in children's cancer wards and things like that.
And I go, how do you do that day after day?
How do you deal with tragedy and loss?
And hopefully you're not dealing with a lot of loss with
the people that you're caring for, but there's got to be
just a ton of emotional weight on you just because of
the evil that you see on a regular basis.
How do you stay motivated?
How do you keep doing it day after day?
That's a great question.
I think one of the significant things that
happened when we started this journey is at
our family business, the Cabinet company, we had
already made a commitment to providing chaplain services,
spiritual support in that space.
And when our family approached about the heights and all
of the complicated mess that goes along with these situations,
my first request was to have chaplain services for the
staff we bring on, myself included, because I knew, especially
having gone through everything with my own family, I needed
that outlet and that support.
And from that, it has grown into, if I need to
talk to our counselor, if any of our staff need to
talk to our counselor, even our counselor has access to talk
to the chaplain or if she needs to go counseling with
other people because it is messy and complicated.
I feel privileged because of my alignment with
my spouse that we have each other.
And then really, our faith is at
core of how do we process this?
I don't know how people who don't have their
faith to go back on process these things.
It's difficult.
And so I'm very grateful for the values and the support
system that I can go, okay, he has a bigger plan,
and I can't carry the weight of all of this.
And I think that's something I feel like
I've been spiritually gifted with faith specifically.
I don't worry.
I don't carry mass weight.
I get burdened sometimes with details and complicated of, man,
we got to do this and we've got to cover
that, and how are we going to do that?
How are we going to fund it?
But in general, I don't carry a daily
weight of the world, if that makes sense.
And in this space, that could
be real easy to carry that.
I just know, even thinking about my kids and my spouse,
but extending it to our clients and my staff, they're his
children first, and he cares more about them than I possibly
could, even though I think I care so much.
And so I remember that I remind myself often
there's a creator who cares so much more, and
you don't have to carry all this burden alone.
It's okay.
And the other component of that, that I
really love is I'm in this incredible, sweet
network of serving professionals in my community.
Ellis county has just a breadth
of amazing people who serve.
And I could not be more grateful that even
know, yes, we have gaps we have to overcome,
and yes, there's funding challenges and all these things.
We have some really cool support
systems within our serving community.
I don't know if that's true in other communities.
I really don't know.
I mean, there's an entire nonprofit
called Mission Matters in Ellis County
that serves the nonprofit community.
And so we just had a meeting where they literally spent
and did a training session on us, on tips of how
to handle your email, and then they spent an entire training
session on Foxhole Fatigue and how do you handle this?
And you're in a room with everybody else who's
serving, and you're working with them day in, day
out, week after week, and you're both possibly feeling
fatigued, but you then have each other.
And so I really feel privileged to be
in the community I'm in and the care
that's wrapped around the people who serve.
Going back again to that moment when you knew
that this was the direction that you were headed
in, it sounds like the initial vision was a
project, maybe let's go rehabilitate this center, and it
turns out it didn't exist.
Did you ever and maybe you already said it,
maybe it was walking through the other facility.
But between then and that initial moment, was
there a point where you thought, okay, I
think I could see myself actually building this
and starting this thing and running with it.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, you're exactly right.
It went from a project to a full passion.
This is zero to hunt to 100 overnight. Yeah.
And I didn't see it coming. Right.
So this wasn't in a like,
sometimes entrepreneurs have a man.
This is brewing in my brain for years and
decades, and then I'm going to go do this.
This opportunity presented itself to me, and I
am overwhelmingly humbled all the time to be
in the role that I'm in.
But there is absolutely a turning point.
And I don't know that there's a specific point in
time, but there's definitely a period of time that there
was a transition from this dream and idea.
And it was probably after we met with the county
and got this, like, yes, we're going to support you.
And it took a little while to sink in.
And I think that all of a sudden,
everything I had spent the last 18 months,
two years doing, I finally accepted that role
personally and took the passion personally.
Not that I didn't have that, but
it triggered and ignited something different.
And you can definitely tell now, I mean, the
network that I'm privileged to have in the community
with our business owners, our other nonprofits, our colleges,
our officials, there's no way I would have this
position if not for the support behind it.
But that turning point where it becomes this
passion project as opposed to this one point
in time, I'm going to build this thing.
This is something that I am hearing feedback being given
to me over and over again as the kind of
representative or the face of this, that people are coming
alongside this because they see the buy in.
It's not a, oh yeah, I'm going to get this
done and then sell it off, or I'm going to
create this and then be done with it.
I mean, I have no idea how
long I'll be the executive director.
Hopefully we'll grow and maybe I can backfill myself.
But what I know is I'm not walking away from
it, even if someone else fills some specific role.
I mean, man, if I'm dreaming big, I want to
create more family justice centers across the state of Texas
and help them get to where we are now in
a shorter know how do we duplicate this?
Because it can meet more needs around the state.
And I'm like, that would be amazing.
What were some of the biggest hurdles that
you had in trying to get this started?
Man, if I'm critically looking within, I'm
probably one of the biggest hurdles.
What do you mean by that?
My own lack of confidence in myself.
I have never seen myself in this role.
And it's been a process to adjust.
It's a mental, emotional process for me
to kind of evolve into somebody different.
It's an adjustment for my family.
And I think I held myself back a little bit on
the early on side of it, going, who are you?
You've never started a nonprofit.
You've never run an organization.
You've never been in charge of people and staff in bringing
this together, oh, you're going to get in front of all
these city officials and make this kind of ask.
And so I think for me, that was one of those barriers.
I think some other big things is just learning systems.
There's things you just don't know.
You don't know what you don't know.
And so having to ask the questions, and I think
it's been incredibly important along the way to stay humble
and just continue to ask and not assume.
And those have been some of the biggest strides of successes,
is something my dad taught me very early on and I
think is another one of my strengths, is resourcing.
I don't have to do it all.
I have incredible people, and I know how
to utilize those talents, those gifts, and let
go of the micromanaging of all of those.
I can't do what my operations director does.
It's not possible.
Were you able to delegate from day one, or was that something
you had to learn to let go and give things up?
I think I feel pretty privileged that I had not a
big struggle delegating and I think that's just because kind of
a combination of coming from not so confident, but then having
so a little weak in that area, but having a huge
strength in resourcing, it helped balance that.
And so I knew that there were key players, key
people roles that I needed to bring to the table,
and I don't have a problem surrendering some of those.
You've got to be careful.
So that's something I'm cautious about.
But I've learned from both my dad and
now many others in my community how to
surround myself with extremely wise counsel.
And so as I'm making these decisions again,
none of this is Jennifer Salzman's doing this.
I don't function that way.
That for me.
I can make decisions, don't get me wrong,
but when I'm talking about big picture, this
is looking holistically across serving our county.
I'm surrounding myself with a tremendous
amount of strength from our community.
My board is 30 people who are very invested
but all have the alignment and passion to serve.
And so then when I can go to do a handful
of them and say, what are your thoughts on this?
How do you think, what about this person for this role?
What about this partner to fill this?
Is that I'm feeling this way?
What do you guys think?
And so I've been very privileged to have really
strong counsel around me that's helping me not feel
that I have to have it all.
I don't have to do all of it.
I can give a lot of that away.
If you think you're the smartest person in the
room, I can pretty much guarantee you're not.
And it's refreshing to see a leader
that knows that and decides and consciously
decides to seek help from people outside.
Clearly that has been a key to your success.
What are some of those other things that you look back on
and go, oh my gosh, if we didn't do this, if we
didn't have this, that we wouldn't be where we are today.
Oh man, there's so many of those.
I mean, those key people are the backbone of this.
It would not have happened without there's
I mean it's more than a handful.
Which I'm so blessed to say that there are
so many amazing people that have decided that they
too are going to take on this passion.
I mean, I think of the chair of my board
and seeing even just the shift in him, we asked
him to step into this and join us to create
this legacy and help launch this thing.
And his initial yes, he'll tell you was because
my dad asked and the relationship they had and
there's somewhere along the journey and I don't know,
it'd be interesting to ask him.
I don't know where it changed for him, but it was
apparent that the project we had asked him became a passion.
And I have seen that happen over and over
again with the key people that are helping.
And I think that that has been
the game changer for this to launch.
I don't know any other nonprofit that has hurdled as
much buy in, as much build up in getting to
where we are in such a condensed amount of time.
And what year did you start the organization?
That's a great question.
I started the role in about the end of 2018, but
we didn't provide services until about the beginning of 2020.
And of course, mind you, we're in COVID years.
So that was very interesting, which was a little bit
of a silver lining because we were able to start
virtual and so we've been able to phase into operating
so we could start really small and dream really big
and what did that look like?
And even we were I haven't even talked
about any of this, but we were going
to build a 30,000 square foot building.
We were going big or go home.
And the Lord said, Hold up,
you've got to step into this.
And we were given an opportunity to shift and pivot.
And now we've been blessed with this incredible facility,
but it's giving us the ability to phase in,
and so we're growing at a more realistic pace.
And so I'm really appreciative of that as well.
You talked earlier about the self doubt.
Were there any specific fears that you had?
I think just really circling around,
feeling inadequate or feeling unprepared.
Having gone to business school 20 something years ago and being
a mom, I was just like, my brain went into this,
like, I don't know if you can do that.
And it's very interesting because it gives me
a unique lens to connect to clients who,
for whatever reason in their cycle, have had
some kind of distance from becoming something that
they need to become and having some independence.
And so I can kind of see the apprehension of,
like, how do I get my feet under me?
How do I take those next steps?
And I had a lot of that
personally, just I'm just a mom.
I don't know how to get in front of people and speak.
And early on, I would stumble through that.
I mean, I still get nervous speaking, but we've
got a large event coming up and I feel
very prepared that I can speak at that event.
I'm not freaking out about it,
but the beginning I was panicked.
And so I think that component of self doubt, of like,
I don't know if you can do this, but it also
helps me relate to clients because I'm like, you can do
things that you think are impossible right now in your mind.
You may be so overwhelmed and this may be
so beyond what you can fathom, but really what
we teach, this science of hope, of having this
goal and having a pathway and having the motivation,
that's exactly their journey, my own personal journey.
You think about that.
It's like, I had a goal, I'm on my goal, I'm walking
the path, and I have these amazing people cheering me on.
So I just love that I have that kind
of relating to people with my own personal journey.
Has there been anything that you tried that
didn't work out like you expected it to?
I mean, you have bumps in the road.
There's nothing like looming big that I'm like,
man, we totally went the wrong direction.
And I think I can attribute that to that sourcing.
Having a national alliance, having a monthly
director call with these incredible people from
across everywhere around the world, but.
Even in the States I can pick up a
phone call and say, how are you doing this?
What are you doing here?
Has saved me from a lot of those hurdles.
And I think, too, I don't carry a kind of I
got to figure this out or I need to go down
this path or I really think this you might be saying
that, but no, I really got to try this.
So we haven't had too many adjustments, a
few, but nothing huge major, so I'm going
to count that a blessing for sure.
That aspect of your story is very unique
and be very grateful for that today.
So you've been at this for five
years now, from 2018 till now.
What do you enjoy the most and what are the parts
of the job that you wish could just magically disappear?
I think the creating aspect of this
is limitless and I love that.
What else can we think of that helps provide
better services, helps create greater access, helps more people,
helps expand funding, all of those things.
That is my sweet spot of how do I create
in this space, even down to the small details.
One of the things I just came across was
be inventive with hospitality and I was like, yes.
How do I create in my building extra points
of extra hospitality so people feel comfortable and welcome?
So that is really exciting to me.
I think on the flip side of it, the
weight of this issue is really heavy and the
hurt that you have to go through.
And I think that because I am a very
empathetic person, that's the hardest probably component for me
is I can't change, fix, I can wait in
and be there and empathize with you.
But it's their journey, it's their decisions, it's their
choice and so that can hurt real bad.
So that's really hard for me sometimes to deal with.
And then there's the other part of my
job that I really is really challenging, is
lack of funding, lack of resources.
What do you do when you can't fund
that but you still got to do it?
What do you do?
It's difficult.
It's super difficult.
I mean, you reach out to the other
incredible people and reach out to that network
and cast those nets and I need help.
And then sometimes you just bend over backwards and do
things you shouldn't do to create a new pathway.
And I think that that's something we're
having to wait into a little bit.
Being on the early side, the development side
of this is there's some sacrifices being made
by myself and staff that hopefully is paving
an argument is not a good word.
Laying out a foundation of need that is showing why
we need certain funding, we need more positions, we need
more help because we can't meet the need that's there.
How do you do that?
And so it's difficult.
There's a lot of sacrifice happening on the front
side of this, developing this organization that hopefully will
settle down and smooth out on the other end.
I personally have a really hard time shutting work off.
I get home at the end of the
day and my wife will attest to this.
There have been many times, and I've gotten better
about it over the years, but she'll wave her
hand in front of my face at the dinner
table and, hey, are you actually here?
Do you mentally bring your work home with you?
I mean, I have to to a lot of extents.
I try not to, and I think I would say less mental
on the client side because I have a great team who can
help relieve some of that and so I'm so thankful for that.
I carry a lot more on the executive role of
development in the mental side that I carry home.
I think the other challenging aspect of what
comes home is there's six of us.
And so the buck stops here with me.
I can't ask my staff to work nights and weekends.
They step in over and above their jobs all the time.
All the time they do.
But I try very hard to take that
next bigger step than I'm even asking them.
And so if something's needed over the weekend, something's
needed in an off hour, I'm going to tell
them, direct that to me right now.
And so that's where it's really hard because essentially I'm
on call twenty four seven and I'm finding that we're
stepping into more and more of that need.
So I'm prayerfully sitting on I'm hoping there's some
funding around the corner that'll help us expand to
some of that twenty four seven support structure.
But that's hard and I mean,
you're dealing with people's lives.
So that's where it gets really tricky is
you've got what we know is when they
decide to leave is the most dangerous.
And so when you get that call that they've
already left and you weren't a part of any
of the pre stuff or whatever, the point in
time you're entering is when they left.
You know, A, it's the most dangerous and B, it
doesn't matter what hour it is, they still need help.
And so it's like everything has to switch back to
work and we need to put them in a hotel
just till we can triage to get to them tomorrow
morning at daylight or whatever that circumstance is.
And so that's hard for me to shut off
when somebody's in crisis, you can't just go, my
next opening is next Tuesday at 10:00 A.m..
Does that work for you?
No, you've got to jump on it right then. Yes.
And we will expand to a 24 hours facility.
And so some of that infrastructure will naturally come.
Not 100%, but some of it will come.
But we're not there yet today.
I hope we're not too far from that.
But in the meantime kind of building this, that's what it
falls back to is somebody has to step in the gap
no matter what and say, I'm going to take this on.
And that's really the position I've been called to.
And that's challenging.
That's really challenging.
That's a challenge of every entrepreneur I feel like I
have witnessed in my small sphere of the world.
But learning from others, I think that's a
similar starting challenge is everything falls back to
you and you have to handle things.
So I'm hopeful we'll be able to grow and expand
more and it won't so much come back into my
home life and get a little more distance there.
If somebody came to you today and said, I'm thinking about
starting a nonprofit, here's my idea, this is what I want
to go do, what advice would you give to them?
How would you help them validate that
the idea is something they should pursue?
I don't know if this would be the advice they
want to hear, but I think my first question would
be, is there anybody in your community in that space?
Because if there is, don't start from scratch.
Go connect up and partner.
If there's not, then it's really
digging into the why, the how.
And now knowing what I've learned and
know, I would absolutely encourage them.
Don't just circle this one concept and
idea because you don't want to.
In the nonprofit world, the death
of that is a siloed organization.
And so as a startup, if you can start
thinking collaborative effort from the beginning before you ever
start it, you're way ahead of the game.
If you try to like, I'm going to build this, create
this, this is going to be my baby, then all of
a sudden when you meet other nonprofits or you get in
your community, there's a little challenge to navigating, like, well, wait
a minute, we're after the same funding.
There's some hurdles you have to go there.
So those would be my initial reactions is
make sure that there's nobody in that space
or somewhere similar and where can you partner?
Who can you collaborate with?
And then really answering those tough questions,
is this a service that is this
something that is a needed gap necessary?
Or is this something that you're pursuing
because you're wanting to pursue something?
Can you figure out a way to harness
your passion, your efforts in some great way?
What you just said made me think about you
really have to kind of check your motivations.
Why is it you want to do this?
And if there is somebody in the community that is
providing this and you don't want to partner with them,
are you trying to make a name for yourself?
What is actually driving you to do this?
Yeah, it's a humbling set of internal evaluation
of what am I holding on to?
And I think I find myself often saying to
many people, my brain is constantly thinking, what does
the client, the victim, the survivor need?
Not what do I want to do or what organizations
do I want, or what things would I like to
see, what services would I like, what does that person
because nonprofits are serving, what does that person need?
And then how do we weight into
that and support an infrastructure around that?
So that's where this multi agency, the lens of
putting yourself in those shoes and trying to look
completely around and go, what are those barriers?
What are the challenges?
What do we need in this space?
And that's where we want to put all of our efforts.
If you were starting this all over again, knowing
what you know now, or maybe thinking about this
different when you decide to go open that next
one, what would you do different?
I think there's some hurtling of strategy.
I would do different.
Kind of what I was just referring
to, of getting connected to collaborative partners.
I would have do that more
strategically, quicker on the front side.
I spent a lot of my beginning trying to
build infrastructure for a nonprofit, which is critical.
You still have to do that.
And I had a great operations
person helping me with that.
And so I could have easily taken a little
sidestep and worked a little quicker on the collaborative
effort in the community and I would have gotten
to where I am today sooner.
That would have been really helpful.
One thing that I've done strategically is document a
timeline of who we met with, when, how, where.
And so then I am able to look back and go,
it's really critical to get to know this group of people.
And so now I know kind of some of the
political climate of how things work, how does policy work,
how does legislation and the rules and regulations around things.
And so that's been really helpful to learn.
So if I duplicate this again, which I hope I have
that privilege, then I'll know some of those things and I
can kind of expedite to those a little quicker.
Part of my story with my business involves a
phone call that changed the trajectory of the organization.
And I tell people it's the happiest
accident of running this whole thing.
You talked about that timeline and
that got me thinking about that.
Are there some points on that timeline that you look at
and go, man, I didn't realize it in the moment, but
that was a pivotal conversation, a pivotal event in this.
Yeah, there's been several of those.
I think probably the most significant one was that first
county meeting where we had asked the guy who is
the chair of our board, he had kind of a
really incredible network of influence in his life, his career.
And so my dad knew that and knew he was
the right person for us to go get a diverse
group of leadership to the table and that's the most
critical component that I had no idea was happening.
My dad knew it, but I was just so, yeah, this is great.
We're going to go present this idea.
But the strategy behind having the right people in
the room to present the idea and to have
the buy in, that's probably the most significant point
in time, because we started our board from that,
and almost all of our I think there were
probably maybe somewhere between 15 and 20 from that
original meeting who still sit on my board today.
And those are incredible people.
So there's been a few of those and then
there's some really interesting strategic things I've learned in
relationships due to the nature of my nonprofit working
with law enforcement in the court system of getting
correctly connected with your legal and your law enforcement
and those particular relationships, if that makes sense.
So those are very critical to this component.
Earlier when you talked about your family saying we're going to
go all in, this is what we're going to do.
We want this to outlive us 100 years from now.
We want this to still be here.
I am glad that people like you are
doing what you're doing, but I hate that
you have to exist in the first place.
Do you see a path to solving this problem or is this
something that is going to be with us from here on out?
Unfortunately, the answer is it's
something that's with us.
I don't see it without.
However, I do see the path.
This model, this Family Justice Center, wraparound services, multi
agencies, absolutely gives me hope to a path where
a 75% statistic of the next generation going to
repeat this that can be reduced.
I have tremendous hope that we can set
those goals, create those pathways and help these
families get motivated to break those cycles.
And so I don't think we're going to move into
a space where it's not needed, but I sure hope
we move into a space where it's needed less.
There's less severity.
Can we help families sooner in the cycle and
eradicate the homicides around domestic abuse and violence that
I can see hope for reduction of those homicides.
So there's work to be done.
I don't think it's going away. I agree.
I hate that these are services needed.
I hate that we have to deal with child
abuse and we have to deal with elder abuse
and sexual assaults and all of these things.
But those supports around them are so important.
What's next, man we are moving into our new campus.
So that is next on our horizon.
We are expanding, which is really great.
We have these incredible partnerships and they
are virtually all there and happening.
But to colocate, move in one campus, put it
all under one roof to see the magic happen
of clients able to come somewhere and meet with
multiple agencies and physically reduce those barriers.
That's the next step for us.
Shortly after is getting our shelter, 24 hours
shelter opened and that turns us over into
that 24 hours space of care.
That's a huge next step for us.
I really hope that's a 2024 step, that would be
a huge goal for our organization to get there.
So I'm hopeful that that'll happen.
But those are on the horizon.
If somebody wants to get involved, if somebody wants to help,
support in some way, what do they need to do?
Yeah, we have several ways you can interact with us.
Our main is our website, it's WW
theheightselliscounty.org and we have a Facebook page
You look up The Heights Ellis County.
We're also on Instagram.
There's a really easy way from all of
those social platforms to send us a message.
That email will go directly to me
and I can get you plugged in.
There's our phone numbers on there.
You'll be able to get all the information.
We have some great videos.
We've got a video of our survivors, a
video from camp with our kids to really
see firsthand what is actually happening.
It would be amazing to get people
to go look at it, get involved.
We obviously rely on donations.
We're kind of diversely funded, so
we're not exclusive donations only.
We work with state and federal funding
as well as foundational grants and things.
But the community at large
is really our biggest support.
And so there's a way to donate on there, there's
a way to volunteer, send us a message for that.
We've got some really cool upcoming stuff.
So we would love for anybody to get involved.
For people that are in other parts of the
country that want to give of their time, is
there a central place where they can find other
family justice centers throughout the country?
Yeah, I love this question.
So the alliance for Hope International, if you'll just
google alliance for Hope International will take you to
that national network and it is worldwide.
I would absolutely recommend we need
more of they're so, so vital.
There's a lot out there, but there's not enough.
And so if you can go there and
kind of research what's close to you and
how to get involved, that would be amazing.
Is there anything we didn't cover that
you would hope to talk about?
I think probably the most significant thing for
me to cover is realizing that with the
prevalence of this issue, the chance that somebody's
listening and dealing with this is real.
And I would just encourage that even though this
is a personal, private issue, there are people who
want to help and to have that courage to
seek help, whether it's through my organization or reaching
out to someone local, there are people who want
to help and please reach out.
Jennifer, thank you again for coming on, sharing
your story, being vulnerable, and more importantly, thank
you for what you're doing about it. Yeah.
Thank you so much for having me.
That was Jennifer Saltzman, founder and executive
director of the Heights of Ellis County.
To learn more about how you
can support this cause, visit theheightselliscounty.org.
If you or a founder you know would like
to be a guest on In the Thick of It,
email us at intro@founderstory us.