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

Kathy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

Divorce was the defining moment in my Life and the realization that it was an epic failure and that it was indicative to how I viewed myself in which after time started me on my journey of self-rediscovery and peace with letting go!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the CEO/Founder of a nonprofit for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. I am a BIPOC Founder with lived experience. What sets me apart as a Founder is that I worked in victim services professionally and then found myself needing the same services. I was able to gain perspectives from both sides of trauma as a provider and a client, simultaneously. I want the community to know that Back to Eden is about healing and impacting lives of survivors by empowering themselves to rediscover self!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I founded my organization without a professional consultant or grant writer. I researched and used my learned experience to create the programs and started with providing outreach to the parents and families in shelter. I didn’t have a budget for a grant writer and the outreach activities we hosted I paid for out of my pocket. I researched more to find grant platforms and created accounts to get RFQ and RFP announcements. I started writing my own grants and after 4 years of faith and perseverance. I received my first grant from United Way Austin.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I learned that best practices to provide victim services does not always involve crisis management and that best practices sometimes is equipping survivors to manage and become agents of their own lives and challenges. Best practice is coaching and not rescuing and sometimes saying “no’ to a service. I notice a pattern of clients that didn’t have continuous of care, shared decision making in setting goals, and adequate support were prone to be in one crisis after another. We reworked our model to be “coaching” and not” case management”.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.backtoedenfellow.org
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• Youtube: back to eden fellow program