Andrea Lewis
Manager of Housing and Client Services
Employment Connection
Minneapolis, MN
Patrick Henry High School
Saint Louis University, BS, Social Work
Tell us about the work of Employment Connection and your role.
Employment Connection is a not for profit organization that assist individuals with barriers to achieve self-sufficiency through employment services, housing services, counseling services and various other resources offered. My role as Manager of Housing and Client Services is primarily to manage the Housing Programs. We assist clients that are at risk/experiencing homelessness to get stably housed and to overcome some of their other barriers so that they can maintain their housing. My day to day looks like a lot of meetings with clients, landlords, community partners, and case managers. I manage the funding for all of the housing contracts, so I track the spend down while also trying to make sure the program is effective for the clients in helping them become self-sufficient and not enabling them to rely on the system.
Can you share a client success story that is particularly inspiring for you?
There was a young lady who came through our Rapid Re Housing Program with her young daughter and she was a college student trying to stay in school while she was losing her home. After she exited the program, she continued to struggle and needed help a few more times from the program to stay in her housing. Every time a case manager would ask her why don’t you quit school and work full time or go to school part time so that you can work full time, her response was that she couldn’t and finishing school was more important. So after getting another notice from the landlord that they wanted to evict her, I decided to sit down with her and find out where her head was and what her plans were. I asked her again are you sure you don’t want to take a semester off and get your money saved or scale your classes back so you can work full time. Then I reminded her that she had responsibilities as a tenant and a mother to take care of these things and that sometimes we have to sacrifice our goals for the needs of our families. She started to cry and she told me that finishing school was for her family and that she was so close to securing a real future for her daughter and she had already made so many sacrifices for this that she couldn’t give up now. So that moment was humbling and inspiring at the same time because it reminded me that what I see as important or right for my family doesn’t have to be important to someone else and I don’t have the right to tell her to live her life a certain way to be more convenient for me. I had an opportunity to help her change her life in a very real way and I was squandering it by asking her to minimize her goals to fit her circumstances and that goes against everything I thought the program should be. So she ended up graduating and getting a good job with a non-profit agency. She is someone who I could definitely see being nominated for this award in the future, as she has amazing perseverance and strength beyond her years.
As a longtime St. Louis resident, what are some of your favorite destinations here?
My favorite spots in St. Louis are, Tower Grove Park, and Forest Park. I’m not much of an outdoors person but those are the most beautiful sites in the city to me. I like to eat on The Hill and in the Central West End, and when I do get a chance to enjoy the night life its usually in The Grove or Downtown.
