The following was submitted by the LIFRC
The staff and board of the Lopez Island Family Resource Center welcomes our new Executive Director, Barbara Gurley. After Celia Marquis retired in June, we were so fortunate to find Barbara, newly arrived on Lopez, and to have her enthusiastically join our remarkable staff. With Barbara’s positive energy, experience working with people, as well as program development, grant writing, program management and evaluation skills, we are thrilled to have her as our new Executive Director. Please stop by and welcome her! ~ Lexi Taylor, Board Chair
Barbara grew up in Massachusetts and received her bachelor of arts in child psychology and education from Clark University. One of her first jobs was doing play therapy with kids. She went on to work with teenage boys coming out of juvenile detention. She discovered that she loved both of these jobs and decided to obtain her Masters in Health Administration from Clark University/University of Massachusetts (UMass) Medical School. Barbara moved to Seattle and soon started her own consulting business and began doing outcome evaluation consulting with small agencies that couldn’t otherwise afford it. She states, “I used to volunteer a lot of hours to help some of these little agencies out.”
She also took on a part time job with the Washington Alliance for Better Schools called Readiness To Learn. That was when she met Celia Marquis about 13 years ago. As a part of the job, Barbara worked closely with family support advocates in four different districts and was heavily involved in a parent leadership project with immigrant refugee families.
About five years ago, Barbara and her husband took a bike trip and stayed in the Lopez Farm Cottages.
Barbara states, “We just loved it here. We had said we would never own another house, but we really liked the peace and quiet here and the stronger sense of community.” They ended up buying property on Lopez and recently moved here full time.
Barbara is known by many as “the cake lady” at the Saturday Farmer’s Market. She knew that she was going to move to Lopez before she got the job at the Resource Center and she wanted something to do! In the midst of her move to Lopez, she was contacted by Celia and invited to come in to discuss the position.
When asked what drew Barbara to the Resource Center, she states, “I love all the staff and there’s a lot of positive energy and all of the programs that are offered are amazing. I can see it’s a really important thing in the community. There are a lot of opportunities that are provided to people. I was looking forward to being able to work with the staff at the Resource Center and to be involved in the community here. I’ve always volunteered a lot on the side. I enjoy being around people. Social justice and providing people opportunities and equity is a really big deal to me.”
When asked to discuss what she envisions for her upcoming role as ED, she states, “My whole life I’ve never gone into a job with my ideas. Even more so after doing this parent leadership program. I think the most important thing on the planet is to listen to other people. I’m here to help provide the support
that the staff deserves because they are working really hard… and I’m here to listen to the community and what they want and need, and to then respond to that. You have to listen, but you also have to follow through and do what it takes to make things happen. So that’s my focus. And of course the other side of the job will be obtaining grants. I plan to use my past 30 years experience getting grants to gain support for all the great work that the family center does.”
