Julie Thomasma, Ph.D., has served as Chief Executive Officer of Child and Family Charities since 2015. Her passion is building supportive services for children, youth and families to thrive in our community. Dr. Thomasma is currently working to build a comprehensive campus to serve youth and families by repurposing a portion of the former McLaren Greenlawn campus.

 

Actively involved in the community, Dr. Thomasma serves on the Board of Directors for Exchange Club and Michigan Federation for Children and Families, and she is a fellow Lansing Rotarian. She holds a doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology. She completed her APA accredited clinical internship at Boston Consortium in Clinical Psychology with a Clinical Fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Teaching Fellowship at Boston University.

 

Her undergraduate work was at the University of Michigan where she majored in Biopsychology and Cognitive Science. Dr. Thomasma lives in Williamston with her husband, David and two children, David and Aubrey.

President Courtney Millbrook called the meeting to order in the beautiful Michigan Room of Lansing Community College. Rich Howard gave the reflection and singing of God Bless America ensued. President Millbrook led all assembled in the 4-way test and Andi Earl facilitated the introduction of visiting Rotarians and guests. President Millbrook reported on the health of the club: Irv Nichols had total knee replacement and Steven Melnyk has a detached retina; please keep both in your thoughts.

 

Andi Earl gave her new member presentation, earning her BLUE Badge and moving out of the “RED BADGE ROOKIE” ranks. She’s a Lansing-area native, having grown up on a farm with all the animals you can think of. She went to CMU (twice) and has a master’s in Health Administration. Originally an intern at Hospice of Lansing, she fell in love – with the organization and her fiancé – bought a house in Holt and is leaning into the vital space that cares for our community, now as Executive Director. Andi loves movie nights, dogs, cats and being a part of Rotary. She’s passionate about building a better community, which was a nice lead into Todd Gute’s introduction of Carmen Hall, with Habitat for Humanity, to share the impact of our grant dollars they received this spring from our Rotary Foundation. Todd has been involved with this organization since the early 1990’s, beginning in Shiawassee County, and now with the Lansing Chapter. Todd shared the story of one of the first families that he met through building their home, highlighting a child, Ben, who today is a college graduate and is a state representative for Shiawassee County. Carmen provided an oversight of Habitat for Humanity Capital Region, which includes two Habitat ReStores that help fund the organization, along with the sales of the houses (which they don’t give away free), charitable gifts and more. Thanks to Rotary funding, they were able to subsidize critical home repairs for families and individuals like Norma, who got a new roof to stop the rain from pouring into her home, Kurt, a disabled veteran, who needed to siding, doors and thresholds to enter/exit his home safely, and Monica, a mother of two disabled children whose home needed working windows. Volunteer hours are vital to projects like these and others, in addition to the grants that help to cover the materials – on which costs are rising exponentially. They are grateful to partners like Rotary that support their work.

 

Terry Terry introduced Gina Garner, a headliner at BluesFest (Sept. 16-17; tickets on the tables) for our special music enjoyment.

 

Rocco Rucinski, functioning as both chair of the month AND day, introduced our speaker of the day, Jo Sinha, President & CEO at Peckham, Inc. Jo thanked Rotary for our work around the world to eradicate polio, sharing her personal polio connections, including that her mother had polio. Peckham (which began in 1976) is a vocational rehabilitation organization that provides paid job training opportunities for people with disabilities and other barriers to employment. 5,713 participants are served annually through Peckham’s 31 programs. The people served by Peckham all have different challenges and abilities. Psychiatric/Emotional are 43%; COVID didn’t improve these statistics. They have 3,000 employees across 11 locations; HQ is in Lansing, with additional locations in Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Charlotte and Flint, MI, as well as Phoenix, AZ (with about 400 employees) and London, KENTUCKY. With five social enterprises and more than 25 vocational rehabilitation services and programs, from manufacturing services to contact-center services and much more. Each month they do a “Peckham in Action” story, with Peckham people sharing their own stories. Follow them on social media or learn more at www.peckham.com They have big plans, expanding youth services and enhancing manufacturing technology, building on the growth and achievement already demonstrated across their business and federal contracts lines. Robust Q&A ensued.

President Courtney thanked Jo Sinha for her time and noted that in lieu of a speaker’s gift, we’ll donate to a local organization through our Lansing Rotary Foundation, which has, through the history of the club, given more than $2M to local organizations and projects.

 

REMINDER: See you next Friday, Sept. 23, in the Michigan Room of the LCC downtown campus; our speaker will be Rotarian Julie Thomasma, CEO of Child & Family Charities. Respectfully submitted by Michelle Reynaert, michelle.reynaert@sparrow.org