PORT ANGELES — This Moss is rolling, and she says she’ll leave no stone unturned.
The executive director of Clallam County United Way, Jody Moss, will leave her position Sept. 11 after nearly 10 years of heading the agency and two decades of serving it.
Friends and colleagues will host a party for her at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St. from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today.
The public is welcome.
“There will be cake,” Moss promised.
And after she retires?
“I’m going to spend two months just sort of rebalancing, and then I’m just going to see what’s out there,” said Moss, 62.
“I really have no idea what might be next. I might do some consulting.
“A full-time job is not out of the picture. I need to see what the community has in store.”
“Community” is key to whatever Moss decides to do.
She’ll stay in Port Angeles, continue volunteering with the Literacy Council, keep on convening the Access to Healthcare initiative and maintain her work with the Great Beginnings Coalition.
“I’m just downsizing my work a little bit,” she said.
Moss said the United Way board of directors was conducting a national search but as of late last week hadn’t made a choice.
She said she’d stay 11 days after her planned last day of Aug. 31.
New programs
All three programs Moss still will help are integral to her philosophy of supporting new ideas to meet longstanding needs, not simply funneling funds to the same established charities.
With sun streaming through a stained-glass United Way logo in her office window above Port Book and News, 104 E. First St., Moss said such “Community Solutions Initiatives” began with launching the 211 Help Line, then embraced the existing Literacy Council and Access to Healthcare programs and finally expanded into Great Beginnings.
That initiative addresses early childhood education to head off “those huge issues that become community problems like high school dropout rates, drugs and alcohol addiction, literacy issues and health care issues,” she said.
The new approach meant rethinking how United Way funded its member charities.
“If we back up United Way’s work and find out what the problem is upstream and work from that perspective, we’re going to make a huge difference in people’s lives,” Moss said.
“I would say that’s what I’m most proud of, bringing that into being.”
Began as volunteer
Her connection with United Way began when she and her husband, Gary Kriedberg, moved to Port Angeles from North Carolina and she started as a volunteer.
Patty Hannah, then the agency’s executive director, recruited Kriedberg onto the United Way board and hired Moss — already an agency volunteer — as a consultant to transition the then-Port Angeles Association of Religious Communities free health clinic to Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics, known as VIMO.
Moss next took charge of the Healthy Communities program, and when Cheryl Baumann — who had replaced the retired Hannah — left the post, Moss became interim director and finally was named permanent United Way director in 2006.
“I sort of wormed my way in,” she said.
That wasn’t long before charities began facing even higher hurdles during the recession.
“It has been a real challenge since 2009 to raise funds,” Moss said.
“We’ve raised more than $1 million in two of those years, but it’s been a challenge.
“People are not so able to give. Maybe they don’t understand United Way the way some of my peers do. The way people connect to charities is different now.”
New givers, leaders
That, Moss said, is “another reason United Way needs young blood, a new generation of givers.”
They, in turn, will be drawn to the agency by new leaders.
“In this kind of position, it’s good to have new leadership,” she said. “It’s good to freshen the outlook.”
Moss has promised herself a trip back East — she grew up in Cleveland — to see the autumn colors in New England.
“I could never take off and see what fall was like,” she said.
“Where I grew up, it was much more colorful than here.”
She’ll return to Port Angeles, though — to stay.
“I can’t go back to a place that’s too hot or too cold. Now I complain about it being too hot here at 85 [degrees] and too cold here at 35.”
Hopes for replacement
Moss hopes she’ll be replaced by “a visionary, dynamic leader who will move the work that I’ve started light-years ahead, really.
“I could never get as much done as I wanted, which is probably what every United Way director said when they left a job.”
She’ll leave with happy memories of the agency’s volunteers and pride in what they accomplished.
“It’s nice to feel that you’ve done something for the community,” she said, “and it makes it harder to leave this kind of position.”
But leave she will shortly after she turns the calendar from August to September.
“It’s time. It’s a challenging job. It takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of commitment and I want to do something new,” she said.
“I’m ready.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
