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Katrina Clark - Colombia
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Katrina Clark, Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia (1967-1969), worked in rural community development and in public health. She is now the director of the Fair Haven Community Health Center, a not-for-profit primary health care organization, where she has worked for over 30 years.
CLICK on the player to listen to this 9 minute interview, or on the link below to download the audio file to your desktop.
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Katrina Clark was inspired to join the Peace Corps by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. She had just started her studies at Cornell University and she remembers the day very well, and the day she made the decision to join the Peace Corps.She served in a number of villages in central Columbia working in rural community development, in some cases bringing drinking water to remote places.
She had asked the Peace Corps if she could live with a local family rather than with other Peace Corps volunteers so she could work on her Spanish. They agreed and she lived with a number of families in Columbia. The children of one of those families recently contacted her by email after 40 years. The village had just gotten Internet access and they located her through Google and sent her an email. She was overjoyed to receive it.
After the Peace Corps, she went to Yale University to get her Masters of Public Health, planning to return to international work, but she discovered the problems in her own back yard. She realized that the need in New Haven, where Yale is based, was as great as what she had seen in other countries. So she volunteered locally with a small free clinic in New Haven.
That’s when the entrepreneur in her emerged. Working with a highly dedicated board and staff, she was able to raise the funds and build the structure to expand the small clinic to a regional health center with 130 staff and an annual budget of over $8 million. She says it is truly exciting to see how the Fair Haven Community Health Center makes a difference in the daily lives of the people of New Haven. To make sure she stays in touch with the community - and to keep up her Spanish – she spends every Tuesday night working at the front desk. She says this keeps her honest - in touch with the daily workings and the patients of the Center although most of her work as Director is administrative and fund raising.
She may not be quite sure what a social entrepreneur is, but she makes sure that her mission and her bottom line are aligned. Her challenges have become greater and the bureaucracy she must deal with has become more complex as the center has grown, but she finds ways to meet the challenges and keeping the needs and welfare of her patients foremost. If doing this - meeting the challenges and taking care of the mission - is what a social entrepreneur is, then she agrees she is one.
Her advice? Do something that you are passionate about and that you truly love. This means that it must be fun to wake up every morning and want to go to work. The job may change – and it does – but the joy should always there.
CLICK on the player above to listen to her interview.
