We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amelia Quinn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amelia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk about keeping costs under control when growing. How have you managed to keep costs from getting out of control?

We live in a culture that values fast growth but as a leader, it’s important to find the balance of growth and health. At Beloved, we work with adult women coming overcoming forced prostitution and sex trafficking. In Atlanta, there is a huge need for long term beds for adult women overcoming trauma and addiction and this need has only grown through the pandemic as many resources have been cut back. It is the responsibility of BeLoved to continue to meet this growing need while also accounting for the depth and care of our program. While people like to watch new homes be built and numbers grow, the organization is only as strong as the effectiveness of the care we provide.
BeLoved has set a pace of opening a new residential home every few years so we can strategically increase the amount of women we serve while growing our staff and organizational infrastructure.
Last month we opened the 4th residential home allowing us to serve 14 women at one time. This 4th home seemed to tip us over an edge of growth and significantly increased our budget. At the end of the day, I realized there is a level of smart and strategic growth but at some point you are going to have to take that leap of faith and watch your expenses grow to reach that new level. I have never been prouder of BeLoved nor have I ever looked at our revenue more. I suppose it all goes together – risk and growth in a beautiful ball of anxiety.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hi! My name is Amelia and I am the founder of Beloved Atlanta, a nonprofit in Vine City. A few things about me before we jump into BeLoved. I live in the West End with my cat and roommate who also happens to be one of my favorite people. I like to live in the gray areas of life – embracing contradictions. You can find me eating ice cream multiple times a day or playing tennis for hours. I like to read a rom-com novel or a book about embracing my body. I can as easily curl up on the couch or go on an adventure outside. I want to live in a world that has room for it all and for everyone. That is part of how BeLoved started. There are groups of people in our culture that we haven’t valued enough to make space for. The systems that we claim work for everyone failed them. BeLoved works with women who through so many situations in their lives were forced into prostitution.
BeLoved residents live in one of the four safe homes we provide while going through a two-year restoration program. The program includes drug and alcohol rehab, individual and group therapy, case-management, medical and legal support, education and employment. We believe we all find healing through proper resources and support.
This month BeLoved turns 10 years old. Every year at Beloved has opened me up as a person to embrace the beauty of it all – the messiness and joy of being a full person.

Any advice for managing a team?

When I founded BeLoved, I dreamed of a community of women healing together. In my excitement, there were a few things I overlooked. I quickly realized that to make this a reality, I needed to focus on my leadership; BeLoved will only be as healthy as the team of people running it. Since then, I have worked with board members, coaches and my own therapist to understand what it means to manage and lead a team. My biggest piece of advice is to constantly work finding the balance between empathy and accountability. At BeLoved, we work to welcome your full humanity. This means understanding work is one part of a full life, we have good days and bad days and all your emotions, dreams and desires are welcome. Yet at the same time you have a responsibility to the team to complete the role you were hired to do with excellence. Our team is only as strong as each person on the team.
BeLoved has swung in both directions on this one. Sometimes we are way too compassionate and people aren’t held accountable to their work and other times we are too focused on the work and forget about the individuals doing it. My hope is we fully embrace each other while growing in each of our roles and in turn growing the health of the overall organization.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I went into 2019 feeling tired. I had been working in this field for 7 years and knew I needed a little break. I talked to the BeLoved board about taking a sabbatical and they were into it. I packed my bags in February of 2020 and headed to California for a month of rest and relaxation away from work. Two weeks into my sabbatical, the US shut down for COVID-19. I took the red eye back from California, got a few hours of sleep and headed to the office to figure out how to set the staff and residents up to shelter in place for the next few weeks. This launched us into one of the hardest seasons of BeLoved. We are built around the idea of healing taking place within the community and everything we knew about community changed overnight.
As things started to stabilize and we implemented a COVID-19 protocol within our community, one of our residential homes caught fire. The residents living there had to move out as we waited for 6 months to get permits from the city to renovate the house.
At the time, it all felt so overwhelming and defeating. Don’t get me wrong, it was not easy but looking back I am amazed at the resilience of our community. We all used the skills we so often talk about. We brought in counselors to help us process, we sat and cried together, we talked about the sense of loss, increased self-care and slowed down some. BeLoved is now in one of the strongest places we have ever been. We not only re-opened the house that caught fire but opened an additional residential home as well. We didn’t shy away from the pain so we were able to walk through it without getting stuck or giving up.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.belovedatlanta.org
• Instagram: belovedatlanta
• Facebook: BeLoved Atlanta
• Linkedin: BeLoved Atlanta

Image Credits
Mary Caroline Russell