Get to know Helen:
What do you actually do all day?
No two days are alike, but I generally work with our team – contractors, grantors, neighbors – to acquire and build affordable housing.
What is the best part of your job?
Going to the closing table and handing someone keys to their first house. It gives me goosebumps every time!
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
I would clone previously adored pets and people so that I could spend time with them again.
What does “Home” mean to you?
Even though I have been gone from Cadillac, Michigan for nearly 40 years now, it still means “home.” Robert Frost wrote that “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”
If your house could talk, what would it say to you?
“PLEASE, fill the nail holes in my trim and finish the final coat of paint”
If you could have dinner with any community activist, past or present, who would it be? What would you ask him or her?
I would want to sit down with Barack Obama, but I would invite Eleanor Roosevelt to join us. I think she would join me in asking him what he intends to do in his next chapter of leadership.