She mends hearts
Sprawled across 107 near-hidden acres in Yonkers sits the sanctuary for children who have faced life traumas.
For Nancy Woodruff Ment, the CEO of Andrus Children”™s Center, personal grief not only gives her a reason to go to work each day, but a way to identify with her clients.
“For everything that I”™ve been able to do for others, it”™s come back to me,” she said. “In 2004, my younger son was killed in an accident when he was traveling in Costa Rica. I had my own unexpected understanding of what trauma and loss was all about. For me to be able to come to a place where that”™s understood and accepted, and to use what my experience of loss has been to broaden other people”™s understanding of what it means ”¦ I really do think I”™ve survived because I”™ve been here.”
As winner of this year”™s Business Council of Westchester Women in Business Success Award for the 2010 Hall of Fame competition, Woodruff Ment wants one thing to come from her reign ”“ for “people to understand not only how important Andrus is, but how important it is that we care for our children.”
When philanthropist John E. Andrus founded the orphanage in 1928, Woodruff Ment said it paid homage to his wife, Julia, an adopted child of the Dyckmans, an old New York family.
Woodruff Ment found common ground with Andrus when she started work at the nonprofit in 1987 after an early start in social work.
“My father was a successful businessman, but he had been an orphan as a child,” she said. “Although I feel like I had a wonderful and warm, privileged childhood, there was always that unspoken awareness that not everyone had that opportunity, so I feel like I came into this work from a sense of wanting to be able to give something back.”
When she joined Andrus, there were 57 children served.
That number is now 2,500.
Andrus”™s operating budget was approximately $2 million in 1987 and today hovers around $30 million.
“Nancy Ment has introduced business management practices into not-for-profit operations and encourages her staff to take a business approach when managing programs,” said Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of the Business Council. “This focused, balanced structure has helped keep Andrus Children”™s Center solvent during one of the worst recessions in our nation”™s history.”
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When Woodruff Ment became president and CEO in 2003, there were a number of strategies she implemented to boost the bottom line and expand the center”™s reach.
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The most important strategy was “the diversification of services, expanding our program and creating a day treatment option.”
So too was strength in numbers.
“Rather than building all of these new services from the ground up, one strategy was actual merger,” she said. “You go and help an organization that was small and floundering and didn”™t have all the infrastructure needed to be a high-performance organization.”
The Center for Preventative Psychiatry and Family and Community Services of Westchester joined Andrus”™ ranks, as did the City of Yonkers through initiatives such as Family Day.
Woodruff Ment said the biggest change in Andrus history was beginning to accept public aid in 1991.
“We were 100 percent privately funded and even though we had contracts and provided services to the government, we didn”™t take any reimbursement for that,” she said. “Our board made a decision in 1991 that we could actually expand our mission and serve more people if we took public reimbursement for services in the way other organizations did and that we would continue to use our own resources to invest in building a greater service array. I think it”™s the best thing we ever did because it put us much more in touch with what community needs are.”
She smiles when asked how it feels to be a Hall of Fame winner.
“Unexpectedly wonderful.”
Her eyes danced.
She is “not one who feels particularly comfortable in the limelight.”
Talk of her work is her repose.
“When I think of some of the things our children and families have suffered, I think ”˜How can we expect them to come back?”™ But yet we can,” she said. “I never thought I would survive (my son”™s death) but yet I have ”¦ because of what Andrus has given to me.”