Coming Home connection
Staff
JoDee Powers
Executive Director
JoDee has managed nonprofits and public service agencies serving communities in New Mexico and Colorado, but often with a global reach. Her work has focused on community health and economic development, climate change and its impacts on women and disadvantaged groups. The skills she brought to bear on these issues will directly benefit Coming Home Connection: she has organized large training events and conferences, engaged in communication and public outreach using a variety of media, and managed annual budgets up to $1 million. Additionally, JoDee is a Conscious Aging Facilitator.
Barbara Espinoza
Director of Operations
Barbara worked for the New Mexican for her first dozen years after high school. She then went on to a career as a stay-at-home mom. She did property management for private clients for 15 years. Following a stint with the Tierra Nueva Counseling Center, she joined Coming Home Connection, where she quickly established systems to ensure seamless scheduling of care for Coming Home Connection clients. She has had much to do with making Coming Home Connection run like a well-oiled machine.
Paige Grant
Program Manager
Paige Grant put in a full career in hydrology and environmental activism, including founding the Santa Fe Watershed Association and serving as its Executive Director for 7 years. She thought she was retiring to write children’s books and learn to farm in southern Taos County, when Celia Owens recruited her in 2018 to fill a part-time bilingual scheduler position with Coming Home Connection. That role has morphed into serving as an assistant to the Executive Director in fundraising and various writing and logistical tasks.
Celia Owens
Volunteer Coordinator
Celia Owens has been a caregiver in her own family since her teens, a hospice volunteer in Santa Fe since 1990, and a Coming Home Connection caregiver and staff member since 2015. She currently serves CHC as Volunteer Coordinator (“Volunteering is the new dating!”) Among other credentials, she has an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies (“ — you have to be willing to get nowhere for a while –”), and is a certified coach in Conversational Intelligence, asking questions for which the answers are not known. She made her home in New York City for three decades and Italy for one. She is a life-long artist.
Sierra Logan
Intern
Sierra is CHC’s new social work intern; she’s currently working toward her master’s in social work from New Mexico Highlands University. She’s been an activist focusing on issues of gender and racial justice for many years, has professional experience doing case management and service linkage for people living with HIV, and worked for almost two decades in the independent book industry. Sierra is also currently working on her first yoga teacher training, with the intention of going on to advanced training so that she can offer yoga therapy to her future clients. In addition, she is also a certified end-of-life doula and is passionate about issues of quality of life and quality of death. She loves books, New Mexico, her partner, and her cats and dogs and is honored to join the CHC team this year.
