Stephanie Kelley, Executive Director of ECCO

Stephanie Kelley, Executive Director of ECCO

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia Presents CEOs you should know. Welcome to the iHeartMedia
Charleston CEOs. You should know. I'm Andrew Burge and this
is where we highlight great people in the Low Country
doing big things. Today we have Stephanie Kelly, current executive
director of East Cooper Community Outreach better known as ECHO, correct,
former dean of students at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina,

(00:20):
and woman of influence Influenced twenty twenty three per the
Charleston Regional Business Journal. Welcome Stephanie, Well, thank you. It's
a pleasure to be here. Awesome you do great things
at ECHO. But I want to take a minute and
just say, for people who may not be as familiar,
tell us about ECHO and the great community service you
guys offer. Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
So ECHO started as an emergency relief effort thirty five
years ago this month, after Hurricane Hugo hit this area.
Our founder, Monsignor Carter, was a pastor at a local
Catholic church. He stayed when the hurricane evacuation was called
for because he had a parishioner on her deathbed and
he thought, if I leave, who will care for this family?

(00:57):
And instead what it led into besides for that family
was also creating this incredible community resource. The thought was
help people who had been impacted by the storm. But
in the process of doing that, Monsignor Carter realized there
were needs in this community that existed long before Hurricane
Hugo hit this area. That there were people living without

(01:18):
electricity or running water who were not able to put
food on the table for their families. And so he
then thought, how do we turn this into a permanent resource.
And so we are about to celebrate our thirty fifth anniversary.
I like to tell people we started after Hurricane Hugo,
and thirty five years later, we're helping people have storms
blowing through their lives each and every day.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's amazing. And I think that April you started a
renovation project. Correct, We did, absolutely so. Our facility that
we're in right now, we've been in for twenty two years.
We opened that in two thousand and three to serve
the community, and about five years ago started realizing we
were running out of space and needed a way to
be able to better serve the people and the families

(01:56):
that we serve. Matter of fact, during COVID, we had
to move our clothing closet out of our current facility
at six Mile in order to make room for our
food pantry. And so the goal is to get everything
back under one roof. And so we broke ground on
a three thousand square foot edition and we're also knocking
walls down within the building to renovate the space, and
so it'll take a year, but next April. We are

(02:17):
so excited about having the community and to see the
ways that we'll be operating more efficiently. Well, you have
a deep background in higher education some liberal arts universities,
most reularly dean of students at Columbia College. I believe
you started as a just a tour of the building, right,
and you volunteered to some aspect. Can you tell us
about how you became involved with that, So thank you

(02:37):
for that.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I love to tell people, please let me take you
on a tour because I'm hoping I'll get you a
hook that someday you might want to work at Echo.
So yeah, Actually, my husband and I I was working.
We were both working in Columbia, but we were renovating
a house down here in Mount Pleasant and so we
wanted to get engaged in the local community. His business
started doing well, we thought, well, how do we give back,
and so we started donating to Echo. And every time

(03:00):
I'd get a thank you letter, it said, come in
for a tour, Come in for a tour. Well during
the week when the Echoes open, I'm in Columbia working well.
When we finally moved down here and I took a
little break from higher education, I got one of those
letters that said come in for a tour, and I did,
and I was just shocked because our facility at six
mile and anybody who takes a tour says, as you

(03:20):
keep going through, there's more, there's more. I did not
realize there was a medical and a dental clinic in
the facility. I knew it was a food pantry. I
knew there was a clothing closet. I didn't understand about
our asset development program that helps people save money for
a first time home purchase or to start a small business.
I had no idea there was a financial assistance program.
So it was that tour that my eyes just kept

(03:41):
getting bigger and bigger and more excited, and I thought,
I have to be a part of this, and so
I started as a volunteer. I did fundraising, for the organization.
I was leading a women's empowerment group for women who
had graduated from a program ECHO had called Getting Ahead.
Then I got invited to join the board, and then
when the executive director position opened up, I thought, well,

(04:03):
what the heck, I'll throw my hat in the ring.
And seven and a half years later, I will tell
you it is the great privilege of my life to
lead that organization.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
So that one tour got you one tour who knew
or with lead. So on the site it says assistance,
guidance and resources is kind of your mission or what
you do. And you talk about medical on site and
some of those things. Can you go a little deeper
into that, some of the resources that you don't necessarily
outsource you have on site at the facility.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
We sure do. There's a medical clinic that has four operatories.
When people take tours and I show them the dental clinic,
their first response is this looks like my dentist office,
And I said it is. It's a dental home for
people who do not have dental insurance. And our medical
clinic is the same way. We've got four exam rooms,
three in the new facility, but all of those things
are on site, and the philosophy being how do we

(04:49):
make it as easy as possible for people to access
all the services that we have. Because twenty five percent
of the people we serve do not have cars, they
have to sometimes pay people to bring them to Echo.
They use public transportation. We've got a client who rides
her moped to Echo, people who bring their bikes, and
so that thoughts has everything under one roof to make
it as easy as possible. So I want to go

(05:11):
back to your question about the assistants, guidance and resources.
That's those are three powerful words. The assistants are the
services that Echo provides at six Mile right now at
six Mile and at Mowman Road soon to be back
under one roof. The guidance is the work that we do.
We really trying to help people. People often walk through
our door, sometimes just lost. I'll give you an example.

(05:31):
We had a mother who her husband was killed in
a car accident on his way to work. She was
a stay at home mom with three young children. They
had just moved to the area, no friends in the area, nothing,
and she said, what am I supposed to do? And
so we were helping to connect her because she didn't
have any resources in the community. So that guidance pieces

(05:53):
how we really meet people and talk to them and
find out what their goals are and help connect them
to other resources besides Echo so assistance. What we do.
Guidance is how we help people find their way no
matter what the situation, and then the resources is understanding
we cannot be all things to all people. They're for
two hundred nonprofits in Charleston County and so part of
what we do is if we don't do home repair

(06:15):
and we don't we connect you to the organization that
can help with your home repair. And so that's just
important to our mission is that we're not trying. We're
trying to be excellent at what we do, and then
we're trying to make sure we connect people to the
other excellent nonprofits in this area.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Well that was a great example too, because you talk
about the face of poverty isn't necessarily what you would
see on TV, right, correct. I mean, it's people you
see every day. You talk about the people you see
at the gas station, people you see at the grocery store.
But some of these people have multiple jobs. They're working
as hard as they can to get out. They just
need a little push.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Absolutely, and or everything is going fine until it's not
until there's a health diagnosis for them, or the breadwinner dies,
or there's a terminal illness with a child. We have
lots of single mothers that we're working with who say
I can't keep a job and also pick up my
child three times a week from school because of their

(07:04):
health condition, and so it's really challenging. I think one
of the biggest parts of my job is trying to
humanize the people that we serve. You know, sometimes people
talk about people who are poor in sort of a
negative way, like they don't make good choices. Sometimes they
haven't been dealt really good choices to have to make,
and so I really just try to humanize that the
people we're working with are somebody's mother and grandmother father.

(07:29):
They're doing the best they can with the resources that
they have, and so but it's really difficult to get
up in the morning and face some of those challenges
if you're not sure how you're feeding their kids that day.
And so we're trying to take some of those pressures
off to make sure people's essential needs are met so
that they can have the hope and the encouragement to
be able to deal with the bigger problems.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, it's almost like you help them come in, but
you also help them come out of whatever.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
They're going And that is our hope. You know, I'd
love to work us out of a job where somehow
or another, there's no need for anyone to have to
walk through our doors. But the reality is year about
a third of the people that were serving in last
year was just over fifteen hundred families. They're brand new
to Echo because they've moved here and something hasn't gone
as planned. Because nobody plans to be in a situation

(08:13):
where you can't afford to pay your light bill or
you can't put food on the table for your children,
And so we are there. And I always say how
fortunate we are to live in a community where there's
a place where people can turn when they're experiencing one
of those storms.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
And as you ask for people to help in the
form of volunteers or donations or things to help you
resource to these people. I think the stat that hit
me the hardest was that of all the families that
you've helped, they represent six hundred and forty six children
absolutely right. So it's a whole family, that's that's right.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
And so we people who come through our door to
ask for help are adults, so are all of our services,
any programs, the things that we do are specifically for
the head of households, so that's somebody eighteen or older.
But actually the number went up this past year. We
haven't posted all of our updated numbers. We're up to
seven hundred and eighty eight children live in the households
that we're serving, and so while we're not doing something

(09:04):
directly for those children, we're helping their parents and grandparents
to be able to make sure that the household continues
to go well. We did actually this year start a
new program. We did a senior scholarship for graduating seniors
of ECHO clients, and so we have two young women,
ones at Wafford and ones at South Carolina State University,

(09:25):
who we provided twenty five hundred dollars scholarships to help
them on their college career. So that was the first
sort of thing that we've done to say we'd like
to help your children. The other thing that we do
is obviously a holiday program to help the parents be
sure that there's presidents under the tree for their children.
So lots of things that we're doing that we believe
are helping children. And again that's how I see our

(09:46):
work as impacting multiple generations.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I want to talk a little bit about your leadership
and your matt ground higher education leading programs like that.
How does that convert into what you do now? How
do you look at leadership from your past to president
And it's very different being a nonprofit now, But how
does that relate?

Speaker 2 (10:01):
So you know, it's funny. I went, I threw my
hat in the ring, and I do this on a
whole lot of things. I'm just like I could do this.
I thought it would be a lot like being a
Dina students and it is in some ways. As the
Dina students, I was working with lots of areas within
student affairs and helping them work together toward a common goal.
And so I thought, well, that must be the same
thing at a nonprofit. I'm helping the medical team, the

(10:23):
dental team, our client navigation team all work toward a
common goal, the food pantry, etc. What I forgot is
that on a college campus, somebody else was taking care
of your HR issues and your finance issues, your operations
issues and then that all became part of the team
that I'm working with. So I probably went into it
a little bit naive about my ability to do it.
But one of the things about me is if I

(10:45):
say I'm going to do something and to figure out
how to do it, and I'm going to do it
with excellence. And so it's been great transferable skills on
college campus as I felt like my job was to
help students have the best possible experience and become the
best person that they could be through their college experience.
It's very similar to me here at Echo that I'm
trying to help our clients and our staff have a

(11:05):
great experience working together for the betterment of our community
and that we all become better people through the good
work that we're doing.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Well. Hopefully you'll get enough volunteers where you can help
all the families, but also you can have maybe somebody
volunteer on the HR side, so you increase your bandwidth
a little bit. So who would be the biggest influence
on your leadership? Pastor president? Who drives you every day?

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So I would say right now, and this could be
because our founder passed away on Monday, but he has
been a really great influence to me. So Mon Signior
Carter back in nineteen eighty nine when he said this
community could do better to help people living in poverty
was a pretty bold move because at the time it

(11:46):
was primarily African American families, and I think to say
we could do better by the African American families in
our community was a bold statement. He had a great
vision for how everyone would come together, and I have
adopted that that I want to see his vision become
a reality, and so he has a lot to do.
He's been my great confidante. Again. He just passed away

(12:06):
this past week, but he came in every Wednesday to
meet with me for the last seven and a half years,
and he was my greatest confidant and sometimes would challenge
me like, yeah, Stephanie, you're just pushing too hard, you're
pushing too fast, or don't give up on this. I
remember his first words of wisdom when he congratulated me
on getting the job, as he said, don't forget the buck.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Stops with you.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
And more than once in the last seven and a
half years, he's reminded me who does the buck stop
with And I'm like, with me, make the decision and move.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
On for all things.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
All things, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
So what kind of things do you like to do
around the low country here? You're a baseball fan.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
I am a baseball fan. So we love the River Dogs.
My husband and I had a hope of getting to
every major league stadium, but you know that's gotten to
be an expensive habit, so we're enjoying more of like
the teams, like the River Dogs, but love baseball, Love
any opportunity to get out on the water with anyone
who's willing to say you, would you go out in
a boat with us today? Absolutely? That's one of my
other favorite things to do. The beach is my place

(13:05):
of solitude somehow. Putting my toes in the sand and
reading a good book is the other thing that I
love to do, and can do that just about anywhere
someone finds me on the beach, sitting at a coffee shop,
at home at night. Reading is one of my other
great pleasures.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
So what do you reading now?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
So? I just finished Mitch Album's book The Magic Strings
of Frankie Presto, which was great, and then right before
that I read his book The Little Liar. Mitch Album
is one of my favorite authors, so I read fiction.
I try to, I do believe. And then my other
guilty pleasures. I love watching a Hallmark movie because in
two hours, all the problems are solved and everybody's happy

(13:42):
at the end. That's not, unfortunately, the reality of the
work that I do today. So somehow I like to
think there's always a happy ending. Sometimes it just takes
a little longer than two hours to get to it.
But I'm confident that the work I do each day
is creating better endings for people.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, when you look at leadership, what advice, because there
are may be people listening, we always like to ask
this question of if you're looking to start a business,
if you're looking to get into leadership, what advice would
you give someone?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
So it is not for the fainthearted. I really do
believe when you have to think about and weigh all
of those things like the finances. You know, we just
got done giving our annual raises to our employees and
trying to balance that with our budgetary needs. But I
think if you're passionate about what you're trying to do,
that will come through. And much like I used to

(14:31):
say to students on the various college campuses. I worked
out you have to really want to be wherever you are.
So sometimes I had students in my office that I
was like, who chose for you to come to this college?
And it wasn't their choice, and I was like, yeah,
you could tell they weren't passionate about it. So or
students that would talk about, well, I'm going to do
this because it'll make a lot of money. Do you
like that profession? Well, no, but I want to make

(14:53):
a lot of money, And I was like, you know
that you pay a really big price sometimes if you're
not doing something you're passionate about. So my biggest advice
would be, it's not easy work, so make sure what
you're doing you love it and you know the reason,
the why behind the what why do you got up
every morning?

Speaker 1 (15:09):
You know?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yes, I get paid to do the job that I'm
doing and it helps to support my family.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
We have a roof over my head because of the
work I do.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
But I got to get out of bed to do
that work every morning because I feel like it makes
a difference and I love what I'm doing. So that
would be my biggest piece of advice.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Well, it sounds like you have a real passion for
service I do and you know that passion if if
I'm someone listening that is also has that, how do
we get involved? How do we volunteer? Because I know
volunteer is a big thing.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's great, thank you, So you could go to our
website and fill out a volunteer application. We have almost
two hundred volunteers that are in each week that have
a weekly shift, that show up like it's their full
time job and are so passionate for the three hours
they're there to help in the clothing closet or the
food pantry. But then we're also looking for people to
serve on committees to help plan fundraisers like our pickleball

(15:55):
tournament that's coming up. We have a woman who is
a professional organized every time that we have to reorganize.
A matter of fact, we've just moved back into the
dental clinic after the renovations were done there. She came
in and organized and labeled everything like we can find
ways to use people's skills anyway.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
We all could use one and we love Mary. So
people can sign up. You know, if you're a photographer,
we're anywhere that we can find somebody who has a
skill that we don't have to pay for that at
an event. Is means more money goes back into helping
the families that we're serving. So you might think, wh
I'm not sure how they could use me. Go ahead,
fill out that application and let us find a way

(16:33):
that we can do that. We also do a First Saturday,
so the first Saturday of each month from nine until noon,
people could come in and volunteer in our food pantry.
It's stocking shelves, it's inventoring, it's helping us clean. Sometimes
it's doing yard work. But so that's always a great
opportunity to come in just sort of get your feet
wet and see if you like what our mission's about
and that sort of thing. So and then once our

(16:55):
renovations are done, come take a tour. That's another way
to figure out where you might be able to see
yourself at the organization.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
That's right. You can grab some volunteers the same way
you joined. Come take a tour seek it for yourself.
That's right. So we would urge I know I've heard
first person stories of people that you have helped, so
we had to have you on today to talk about this.
So if you are someone who is looking for a
calls around the holiday season, but you have needs all
year long. We really urge you to take a look
at the East Cooper Community Outreach ECHO and Stephanie, is

(17:25):
there anything else that you want to talk about or
mentioned deeply before we wrap?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
So thank you for the first person stories. In my position,
I don't get to interact with a lot of our clients,
and so that's what we refer to people who've income
qualified to be able to receive services. But every once
in a while someone calls me or there's an opportunity.
I do a once a year town hall meeting. But
I was on the phone with a woman the other
day who said, you know, it was so hard to

(17:49):
walk in and ask for help. She said, but I
was desperate. She had been injured at a workplace accident.
It took four years for her disability to come through.
She said. At some point I just ran out of money.
I had no choice. And she said, but ECHO never
made me feel bad about myself for asking, And to me,
that's an important message that if someone's listening today who
might be thinking I want to refer someone there, I

(18:09):
promise you they will be treated with grace and dignity.
We are as grateful for the people who come in
and ask for help as we are for the people
who make financial donations, who volunteer their time. It takes
all of us to work together to really help. That
philosophy of neighbors helping neighbors come together.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh, we should destigmatize asking for help.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
I love that, absolutely, absolutely, That's the I get ask
a lot when people say what do you do if
I'm outside of the area of them in Colombia and
I tell them and they're like, does every community have
an echo? I said no, But boy, what a stronger
country it would be if every community could take care
of the people who are struggling. So how blessed we are.
So we're always looking for more people who financially want
to support the organization because unfortunately it takes money to

(18:50):
provide the free services that we provide.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Well, all of the first party stories that I've heard
from our successes, because they are successful now, they just
like we said, they just need a little assistance, hit
a bump from the road, that's right, that's right. Everybody
can have one.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
And we all will it someday. It's a lot harder
to deal with when you don't have money to help
get through, because there's some problems money can't solve, but
it makes it a lot easier to deal with those problems.
It's really hard when you're trying to fight cancer and
also not sure how you're going to pay the rent
to stay where you're at. So so again, we just
thank you for helping me sort of destigmatize and the

(19:23):
people that we serve and help broaden the perspective of
sometimes people come in for help one time and sometimes
people come in for a long time. We're there for
whatever people need.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
It sounds like you are well. Stephanie Kelly, current director
of East Cooper Community Outreach ECHO, thanks for coming in today.
We appreciate you my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
You've been listening to iHeart Radio CEOs you should know
heard every Tuesday and Saturday morning right here on this
iHeart Radio station.