Community Update

Dear L'Arche PDX Family,

I have some positive news to share with you regarding the many transitions we have going on at the moment. As most of you know, Maggie Clack, who has whole-heartedly served in the Community Leader/Executive Director role the past 15 months is coming to the end of her term as Community Leader/Executive Director. To help us make a smooth transition as we develop  a new Community Mandate and carry out the search for a new Community Leader, Jessica Leitner, who has served on the Board for the last five years, has agreed to step off of the Board and into an interim Community Leader/Executive Director Role until we choose our new CL/ED and onboard them in the upcoming months. Officially, her first day as CL/ED will be tomorrow. This will allow us to increase our capacity on our leadership team as Maggie transitions out of her role and gives us some space to ensure that we make a very thoughtful and intentional choice for our new Community Leader. Jessica is well aware of the hardships that we've faced over the last several years and continue to face as a community. She also brings over 30 years of experience as an Executive Director working with adults with IDD. She is an amazing human being, and I look forward to you all getting to know her better in these next few months. Fortunately for all of us, Maggie will also still be around and is working hard to get Jessica and our new Business Director, Gray Shuford, up to speed over the next month. 

In the meantime, we are moving forward on our Mandate development and our new leader search, and I'm very optimistic about our path forward. A Mandate Discernment team consisting of Board members David Perry, Karen Danner, and myself; Daily Life members Therese Deslippe, Annie Rose Macer, E Marcovitz, Cindy Leonard, and Brendan Teninty; Community Friends Erin Weisensee, Lilia Teninty, Kim Bastable, and Fredericka Banks; and our L'Arche USA representative Lori Moore have begun to meet to take all of the feedback that we got through our home conversations, surveys and Mandate Day conversations to begin developing a new Mandate. This new Mandate will be used to help inform our new Community Leader search for which a separate discernment team will form to help select a new community leader. Based on our response to the position posting, we will have some excellent candidates. 

As we have mentioned in previous emails and at Mandate Day, we miss our larger community friends dearly and we want to welcome you to one of our upcoming events. Please email Jessica Bridges at jessica@larche-portland.org or call at (503) 251-6901, ext 707 if you are interested in joining. We'd LOVE to see you.

Please also feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to discuss all that is happening in our community.

Sincerely,

Andrew Davidson, Board President