A Conversation with the Healthcare Foundation’s new Board Chair, Mona Hanes

Mona Hanes, with her husband, Kevin Gay, settled in Healdsburg in 2011. With more than four decades experience at well-established financial institutions around the world, Mona brings financial expertise and a compassionate heart to the Healthcare Foundation, positioning her perfectly to lead us in coming years as the new Board Chair.

Upon retiring in 2018, Mona devoted much of her time volunteering as an advocate on behalf of community members experiencing homelessness in northern Sonoma County. She served on the board of Reach for Home for many years until terming off in 2023. 

Never one to be idle, Mona accepted an invitation to join the Healthcare Foundation Board that same year, initially serving on the Finance Committee. Beginning January 2025, as its new Board Chair, we asked for her perspective on Healthcare Foundation’s evolving role in the health ecosystem of northern Sonoma County, and what she sees ahead.

I understand you’re originally from South Carolina. Do I hear a bit of an accent?

I suppose, every so often. Most of my siblings live in the South. After speaking with one, my husband will say, “Well, you spoke with somebody from home today.”

What brought you into contact with the Healthcare Foundation?

Most of my volunteer work has been advocacy around homelessness. The agency I worked with, Reach for Home (RFH), has the same footprint as the Healthcare Foundation: Northern Sonoma County. When RFH brings people indoors from long-term homelessness, it takes about a month for them to become accustomed to living inside. Usually, their health falls apart. When finally feeling some semblance of security, it seems every ailment ever experienced comes to the forefront. Reach for Home collaborates with the Healthcare Foundation and agencies supported by the Healthcare Foundation to stabilize people with chronic homelessness. In this work, I could see the connection between supporting mental health services and the trauma and the mental health issues existing in the homeless population.

When I termed out as a Board member of RFH in 2023, I sought out the Healthcare Foundation as an opportunity to grow my skill set. Never had I worked as a volunteer with a foundation. With my background as an operational banker, I gravitated toward the operational side of nonprofit work. But I wanted the experience of a foundation, to understand the overlay of all the various nonprofits that we focus on at the Healthcare Foundation in terms of health in northern Sonoma County. Kevin and I had been contributors for a good bit of time. I believe this is our second round of Healthcare Hero [giving], and Kevin and I chose the Healthcare Foundation as one of our legacy gifts. We strongly believe that healthcare is a human right, and we need to make certain that people have access to it.

“I encourage our donor community to find an area that will inspire them to get involved. Ultimately, everything is local. We can truly have an effect where we are.”

Mona Hanes, Board Chair

What have you absorbed of that overlay you mention? How do you see the Healthcare Foundation’s role in the region’s system of care?

I appreciate all four legs of the stool that makes up the Healthcare Foundation: Healthcare Advocacy and Partnership; Healthcare Workforce Pipelines; Capacity-Building Grants; and Community-Led Solutions. The Mental Health Talent Pipeline is very important, but also, I’d like to expand the total pipeline of healthcare workers. For example, elder care advocacy is critical and is being addressed through community health workers; the Promotores programs. I also appreciate the capacity-building grants, and the way the organization has been moving over the last two years toward greater listening and advocacy. I believe we’re on the right path to make certain we are seeing and hearing our vulnerable population at a higher level than we have before. 

I also see that part of our role within the healthcare nonprofit sector in northern Sonoma County is to make certain that each nonprofit has real clarity around what they’re undertaking. Our region has a lot of nonprofits and all of them are doing great work. But if you’re not clear about which is your lane, so to speak, and how your work relates to the greater whole, you can have the problem of competing against each other or, on the other hand, not taking your program to the extent that you could because you fear competing with another group. The Healthcare Foundation plays a great role in that advocacy and partnership to ensure each of the nonprofits we’re supporting is clear in what their role is and not expanding unnecessarily to an area already covered. Money is always tight in the nonprofit world. We are in very uncertain times as the Federal government’s priorities are changing, and many very basic programs are being de-funded. It’s about making certain that we’re doing right by the needs of North County.

How does your background in finance support your role at the Healthcare Foundation?

I am a person who has spent my life looking at organizations figuring out what works and what doesn’t work, pivoting if something doesn’t work. I hope those attributes will assist me on the Board. Ours is such a high-functioning team, I see my role being in partnership, for example, with efforts like the CalAIM project. Amy’s doing a great job of pulling the partnership together.

Through it, the Healthcare Foundation can share information and raise funds to help each of the six local nonprofit partners we’ve identified more efficiently take on the (often daunting) infrastructural lift to connect with Medicaid funding. In general, I feel that’s a role where I can have some impact: making certain that we’re growing together, as opposed to against each other.

Is there anything else on your agenda as Board Chair?

My agenda is simply to support the four strategic areas on which we are focused. The disruption of Federal funding is creating an uncertain environment. While this disruption doesn’t impact the Healthcare Foundation directly, it is hugely disruptive to our nonprofit partners and the community members they serve. Amid it all, I encourage our donor community to find an area that will inspire them to get involved. Ultimately, everything is local. We can truly have an effect where we are. And there’s much to be done here, regardless of the disruption.

You and Kevin have been Healdsburg residents for nearly 15 years, what is it you most appreciate about the region you call home?

I laughingly say I’m a political refugee from the South. I do find the openness to discuss and solve problems very refreshing. I think northern Sonoma County, Healdsburg in particular, functions well. The people who are making decisions are accessible to all of us, and we can provide our input and feedback. There’s an openness and honesty in dialogue in Healdsburg and the surrounding area. That’s what I appreciate.

Kevin and I are hikers and enjoy Lake Sonoma trails, appreciating the pleasant weather of Sonoma County, especially the lack of humidity!