Catherine Meloy ______
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Catherine Meloy _________________ Defining People Everyday for the past fifteen years, career to work with incredibly bright, engaged, fun Catherine Meloy’s phone has rung at precisely 6:03 people who are passionate about what we do,” she AM. With gratitude and the day’s first smile on her says. “To me, what makes it all worthwhile are the face, she picks up to hear the voice of her 94-year- people I work with and the people I work for.” old father reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “Have a good Founded in 1902 by the Methodist minister day, Catherine Anne Cecilia,” he says, and then Edgar J. Helms, Goodwill is now comprised of hangs up. over 160 separate community-based 501(c)(3) Each morning, Catherine knows her father organizations across the country. As a common will call her older sister first, then Catherine, and household name, Goodwill is generally associated then her younger brother and sister in sequence. with its over 3,000 retail stores, but its true power His warmth and dedication is reminiscent of his lies in its role as a path to employment and own mother, a lady who stood over professional success for millions. In six feet tall with a personality to 2013 alone, over 260,000 people match her height. She played the landed a job with Goodwill’s help, church organ for 74 years, often and 9.8 million people used the wearing a blue hat with a small veil organization’s services to advance over her face. “She was an incredible their careers and manage their woman of God who made each and finances. every one of us 23 grandchildren feel Each Goodwill franchise special and loved, always,” Catherine pursues its own unique workforce recalls. “I’ll never forget the time my development strategy, and Catherine father told my sister and I not to drive has brought an entrepreneurial on country roads on our way to our mindset to the approach of the grandmother’s house when we were Goodwill of Greater Washington. She teenagers. Of course we disobeyed was drawn to the social enterprising and ended up sliding off the road. A farmer had to nature of the organization, wherein job training help us get it out, and it was caked with mud by and placement could be paid for chiefly through the time we got to our grandmother’s house. We its retail operations instead of through fundraising. thought we were done for, but she never breathed In fact, of her $40 million annual budget, $28 a word of it to our father. She was always quietly million is furnished by its retail stores alone. Ten supporting us in whatever way she could. When I million dollars of revenue comes from the think back through life, it’s not so much made organization’s janitorial business, which employs special by defining moments, but by defining people with disabilities on many contracts people.” including contracts with the U.S. Senate Office Now President of the Goodwill of Greater Building, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, Washington, Catherine channels her energy into and Bolling Air Force Base. Only $2 million comes an organization that is dedicated to defining from grants and cash donations. people—or, rather, to allowing people to define or When Catherine took the helm as redefine themselves. Goodwill is about enhancing President in 2004, the organization had six retail the dignity and quality of life by helping people stores and a $23 million budget eclipsed by its reach their full potential through education, skills $24.5 million in expenses. Its job training program training, and a good day’s work, concentrating on was minimal, and Catherine saw the potential. The populations that are often discouraged from organization has since grown to 15 retail stores trying. “I’ve been so blessed through my entire and 800 associates, with plans to grow to 25 stores Catherine Meloy by 2020. Its training programs have expanded and and enterprising spirit that have come to be the evolved, now providing solid instruction in the hallmark of the organization’s ethos, it will be the hospitality, retail, and security and protective first of multiple such schools throughout the services industries. They also offer a three-week District, providing case studies in success that career navigation course designed to help trainees, might then be used to expand into Maryland and particularly immigrants, with resume drafting, job Virginia and change even more lives for the better. searches, and online application completion. Catherine may seem destined for the work The organization’s reach and legacy will she’s doing now, but it took a tremendous leap of be defined not only by what it has done, but also faith from her comfortable decades-long career in by what it will do. In 2012, the Marriott Marquis at the broadcasting business to get her here. the convention center in downtown DC put out a Thankfully, she was raised on leaps. Born in Camp Request for Proposals to fulfill its commitment to Lejeune in North Carolina to a father who served partner with a nonprofit to train local residents to in the Marines for 25 years, Catherine and her fill 51 percent of its jobs. Goodwill of Greater family spent her childhood moving to a new place Washington won the $2 million contract and now every two years. All in all, she attended seven heads up the training program, an honor that different schools growing up, but it taught her to speaks to its reputation and potential. “Every embrace the thrill of change. “My parents were single person on our team was involved in the incredibly good at making those moves fun and success of that project,” Catherine recounts. “It exciting, each one like a new adventure,” she means so much that Marriott and the District of remembers. “To this day, change doesn’t bother Columbia were willing to entrust us with me at all. Sometimes you fail and sometimes you something so monumental.” win, but if you’re afraid of change, you miss out on In fielding 3,000 applications to fill the so many great experiences. It created in me a training program’s 700 slots, Catherine was willingness to embrace change in my own life and shocked to discover that 1,846 of those individuals not be afraid of what the outcome might be, could not pass a reading and math test beyond opening myself to God and possibility.” eighth grade, and most of them could not even test Catherine’s mother, a quiet and loving at a fourth grade level. As the scope of the problem woman who was a good balance to her father’s unfolded, Catherine happened to visit the disciplinarian nature, navigated through life with Goodwill of Indianapolis to observe an understated courage. At four years old, transformational best practices for e-commerce, Catherine could sense a sadness permeating the but far more valuable was her exposure to their home when her mother had two miscarriages, and adult charter schools. Designed for high school then the joy that replaced it when her brother, Joe, dropouts over the age of 18, the model eliminates was born. In the years that ensued, they moved two common barriers to education and from DC, to Georgia, to North Carolina, yet every employment training by providing childcare and summer they returned to their grandparents’ home transportation. “The District of Columbia is charter in Teutoplois, Illinois, to reconnect with all the school-friendly, and 63,000 of its adult residents aunts, uncles, and cousins on their father’s side. are high school dropouts,” Catherine explains. “If Catherine was the second of four siblings, people are going to hold a job or create a career, and one of three girls, but always felt as though they need more than a GED—they need an her home environment was pervaded by a sense of experience that teaches them how to think. And equality and fairness. “Our parents never treated beyond that, they need a support structure where the girls differently from our brother,” she reflects. their children observe their commitment in “We all cut grass and did the dishes. Gender just working toward an education. We wanted to wasn’t a thing in our household, and our parents provide a holistic experience that breaks recognized that all four of us are very different generational poverty in several key places along people. They really supported those differences the chain.” and accepted all of us for who we are, and as a In May of 2015, the D.C. Public Charter result, the four of us are very close. I have so much School Board conditionally approved the Goodwill respect and appreciation for my parents for raising Excel Center, a 20,000 square-foot project serving four children who are all very successful in their 350 students annually. With the hard work, vision, own right but never competed amongst each other. Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area It’s a really wonderful thing.” from lunch and offered her a job, jumpstarting her Growing up, Catherine always had a job, decades-long career in broadcasting. Fortunately, whether it was babysitting, working in retail, or Catherine entered broadcasting at time when the ushering at the baseball stadium in college. Unlike industry was looking for women to succeed, and her siblings, who dreamed of becoming doctors or she remembers a number of male mentors who professional golfers, she never really had a clear helped elevate her along the way.