A Foundation of Heart

Dear Friends,

As the year draws to a close, with so much having been accomplished and so much promise ahead, I feel deep appreciation for all of you who are part of this compassionate community of ours.

That includes the three wonderful members of our Board of Directors whose terms end with the year: Amy Hunsberger, Jean Lalla, and our outstanding Board Chair Scott Hafner, who has so wisely steered this organization through three of the most challenging years in the history of our region, and indeed our wider world. 

I’m very pleased to be able to share with you this month an enlightening conversation we had with Scott about his six years with the Healthcare Foundation and what it is that strengthens his hope for our collective future.

I am also delighted to share a conversation with John Jordan, founder and board chairman of the John Jordan Foundation, one of our visionary supporters in the ongoing development of the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline. 

And from the frontlines of compassionate care and ingenuity comes a conversation with Juan Torres, executive director of Santa Rosa–based Humanidad Therapy and Education, an exceptional community partner with whom the Healthcare Foundation continues to innovate solutions to address the severe shortage of bilingual, bicultural mental health professionals available to our Latinx communities. 

There will be much more to say about the outcomes of this partnership in the new year, but for now I know you’ll appreciate the culturally rooted and humane perspective on our mental health crisis that Juan and the Humanidad team bring to the effort. 

More than anything, the work of the Healthcare Foundation draws its direction and momentum from the energy, imagination, and heart of our community partners and the diverse community members who come together on a daily basis to learn from and care for one another. 

Community, Compassion and Equity are the values, the touchstones we go by. The voices we share below all speak to a harmonious balance between them, driven by nothing so much as the love we have for our families, our neighbors, our region, the natural and built environment we share, and the non-human creatures we share it with. In a word, heart. It’s an undeniable force, and the power we have together to shape a better future for ourselves and those who come after us.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season,

Kim Bender
Executive Director

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We wish to express our deepest appreciation to three outgoing Board members for their outstanding service.

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A Conversation with Outgoing Board Chair Scott Hafner

The Healthcare Foundation has been extremely fortunate to have Scott Hafner as its Board Chair for the past three years. His vast experience, wisdom and heart have played a great role in the organization’s ability to navigate an unprecedented public health emergency while pursuing its mission to support our underserved northern Sonoma County communities with renewed energy and imagination to ensure the greatest impact. Scott joined the Board in January 2017, at a time of transition within the organization, becoming Chair in January 2020.  

Scott is co-managing partner of Hafner Vineyard, a small family winery in Alexander Valley, overseeing the marketing and finance side of the business. Before becoming Board Chair of the Healthcare Foundation, Scott had served in leadership roles on the boards of Connecticut College, Pacific School of Religion, Horizons Foundation, Sonoma Land Trust, and other nonprofit organizations. Scott lives in rural Santa Rosa with his husband of 40+ years, Bill Glenn.

We spoke with Scott last week about his time with the Healthcare Foundation, its evolving role in the region, and the meaning of service to one’s community.

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Grantee Spotlight: A Conversation with
Juan Torres of Humanidad Therapy & Education

Humanidad Therapy & Education Services was founded in 2012 in Santa Rosa with the mission to grow the number of culturally proficient counselors and therapists working in Sonoma County. They also offer bilingual and culturally competent counseling to community members and address stigma around mental health in Latinx communities with a convivencia model of participatory conversations designed to “increase a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and quality of life.” 

This year, the Healthcare Foundation joined forces with Humanidad and other partners to explore the creation of a Bicultural Clinical Training Program that provides bilingual, bicultural education and training for third-year graduate students and associates as well as a live, online bicultural training program for established clinicians county-wide who serve the Latinx population. 

This innovative program will strengthen the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline, while offering mental health providers high-quality, culturally and linguistically specific training to support their Latinx clients. The new program is founded on the strong belief that to grow competitive and impactful traineeships in our region, we need traineeships that, on an ongoing basis, offer supervision and training materials in Spanish, along with a curriculum designed with local immigrant, Spanish-speaking and Indigenous populations in mind.

Juan Torres joined Humanidad as its executive director in August of this year. We spoke with Juan recently about the work he and the team at Humanidad are carrying forward as well as the important partnerships that help to make it possible.

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Community Partner Spotlight: John Jordan Foundation

We were thrilled to catch up this month with John Jordan—founder and board chairman of the John Jordan Foundation, CEO of Jordan Vineyard & Winery (which helps to fund JJF’s work)—about the priorities and opportunities JJF has pursued over the last decade and more. The John Jordan Foundation, based in Healdsburg, supports initiatives to improve the quality of life for vulnerable communities, across Sonoma County and nationwide, while concentrating its impact in five areas: youth and family enrichment; education and career readiness; health and wellness; support for seniors; and compassionate aid to animals. 

In keeping with this mission, JJF has been partnering with the Healthcare Foundation on mental health initiatives since 2017 and in particular is a supporter of the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP) program. Launched in 2018, MHTP addresses the severe shortage of bilingual and bicultural mental health professionals serving northern Sonoma County’s Latinx communities by offering scholarships and other supports to bilingual, bicultural graduate students pursuing their master’s in counseling psychology with an eye to serving Spanish-speaking communities here in north county. 

When it became clear, early on in MHTP’s pilot phase, that an effective local pipeline from graduate school to clinical practice would only succeed if there were an adequate number of paid traineeships available to graduate students in northern Sonoma County, JJF made possible the shoring up of this critical stage of the process. JFF supported two paid traineeships for MHTP students in 2021, resulting in the launch of traineeships in Cloverdale and Healdsburg that supported students and families with mental health services; and subsequent support in 2022 helped convert these into permanent positions for licensed therapists. The 2021 and 2022 grants from the John Jordan Foundation helped the Healthcare Foundation establish the effectiveness of local paid traineeships.

This keen grasp of, and attention to, the significant gaps in local systems of support and care is a hallmark of the approach taken by JJF, which in 2021 marked its first ten years in operation.

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