Virginia has more than 30 years of experience in the field of social services.  She served as a frontline staff person in homeless and domestic violence shelters throughout her early years, transitioning into various leadership positions before taking on the role of Executive Director of a domestic violence center for ten years.

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Virginia holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a minor in Psychology from Cleveland State University and a Master of Public Administration degree from Norwich University.

       

As an educator, Virginia has been a host, presenter and panelist at countless community-level, state-wide and national conferences, seminars, in-service trainings and webinars.  Virginia researched, designed and presented a full training curriculum for Community Health Workers in California, expanding the workforce for MediCal services throughout the state.  Virginia is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Educator and is an approved provider of continuing education for the Counselor, Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist Board of Ohio.  

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In recent years, Virginia's work as a consultant for nonprofit organizations has been nationally widespread, from Boston to California and Ohio to Florida.  In this consulting work, Virginia is skilled in the areas of policy and procedure creation, workforce development, program design, grant writing, budget creation, and professional development training.

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Virginia's work with grants spans the full grant lifecycle, from research and prospective funding identification to narrative writing, budget creation, and grant reporting.  Virginia is experienced with federal, state-level and local grants, with both public and private funders.  Virginia has been the sole writer on successful grant applications of every size, resulting in awards ranging from $10,000 to several million dollars for individual grants. 

 

As a consultant, Virginia is there to aid the nonprofit Executive Director in whatever areas where support is needed.  As a former Executive Director of a nonprofit organization, Virginia understands that often, needs arise that are either outside the scope of what is familiar to the sitting CEO or is an emergent issue that needs extra support for a limited period of time.  Some examples of projects Virginia has taken on as a consultant are:  creating content for an annual report; designing a new program, including staffing structure and administrative infrastructure to ensure appropriate implementation; creating budget breakdowns for each program area; building a library of recorded professional development training programs; technical writing of policies and procedures; creating job descriptions, stats tracking tools and more.  

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The CEOs Virginia has worked with as a consultant have universally said that they have found her assistance most helpful because she has "sat in this same seat before."  Her "roll with it" approach and understanding of the varied issues faced by organizations has proven to be reassuring to leaders who can benefit from the use of an extra set of hands and another brain full of experience.  

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While Virginia's early work was primarily within shelters, her work as a consultant has been far broader, including organizations such as:

     A Latinx serving organization, providing youth educational support, civic engagement and leadership development.

     An organization serving individuals with autism spectrum disorder, providing online social connections, caregiver support and general advocacy.

     An organization serving individuals with varied disabilities and disadvantaging conditions with workforce development programming and life skills training.  

     An organization providing recovery housing for women.

     An organization addressing food insecurity by gleaning and rescuing food from going into landfills, then redistributing that food to individuals and food pantries. 

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As it turns out, there exists an unending amount of good work being done all over!  Virginia remains grateful each and every day that she is able to continue to contribute to the greater good by providing additional support to these deeply meaningful missions.  

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