Profile

Laurie Jo Wallace did not originally plan to stay in Boston after moving from California in 1985. However, after being invited to the Health Resources in Action (formerly known as The Medical Foundation) team in 1989, she decided to stay in Massachusetts to pursue her career in the youth and  community development fields and has stayed here ever since.

When Laurie Jo first got to Boston, she worked as a French teacher and activities director at Newman Prep School since she had previous education experience in California. When she wasn’t teaching at Newman Prep, she worked on program development for the students and fundraising for the school. While researching new programs for the students, she discovered an organization that provided free training for and creation of peer leadership programs. “Peer leadership is the idea of young people being trained to lead workshops or activities [for] other young people, be they the same age or younger. I got really interested in that, so I started a peer leadership program at my school.” The instructor of these peer leadership trainings turned out to be Margie Henderson, HRiA’s Assistant Director at the time. Laurie Jo’s connection with Margie ended up being a pivotal moment for her career. When a position opened at HRiA, Laurie Jo was invited to the team to be a trainer for peer leader programs. She recalls that when she joined in 1989, there were only around “10 people and now it's 300 people. So, it feels like almost I have been in different organizations over the years… it's been great.”

As a seasoned professional in the Massachusetts community development sphere and former colleague of Mel King Institute Director, Shirronda Almeida, Laurie Jo has known about the Mel King Institute since we opened our doors in 2009. When we had the opportunity to offer Approaches to Supervision, we knew that Laurie Jo would be an excellent instructor due to her passion for the work and her extensive experience in leadership development. She explains that Approaches to Supervision focuses on the general aspects of supervision and addresses

"issues around power, communication, the four leadership styles, and a lot of other pieces that go into supervision. It’s a big job, and a lot of times people get thrown into it with very little training, and they're not even given a lot of time to do it [and are] expected to do it as part of all the other things they're doing. That’s why [in Approaches to Supervision], we really try to focus on supervision as a job in itself."

After almost 36 years at HRiA, Laurie Jo is gradually stepping back from her role as Senior Director of Training and Capacity Building. Going forward, she is excited to continue training her former supervisees and mentees who will eventually take over for her as she phases out of her full-time position. With an increased amount of free time outside of the office, she is looking forward to spending more time with her granddaughter, doing yoga, traveling, and staying involved in local politics and youth programs.