Page 56 - BusinessWest October 28, 2024

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Lee
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an impact,” she went on. “When you think about it, Freedom to Play ... yeah, it was about basketball, but it was really about giving voice to a whole demographic, to a whole community of individuals who had not really had a chance to tell their story in that way.”
A Drive to Meet Needs
There have been many other examples, of course, including that table and chairs for the residential program operated by MHA, one of myriad instances where Lee has been able to find things for the nonprofits she’s worked for through outreach, relationship building, and communicating need.
At MHA, she became so good at this that she was labeled a ‘waterfinder,’ meaning that, if something was needed by a group, be it winter coats or backpacks or presents around Christmas, she would go out into the community and find it — often from some outside-the-box sources.
Such was the case when she reached out to the course superintendent at the Country Club of
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I told him I was just lo”oking to “
Wilbraham with a request for winter coats.
I asked if they had any interest in doing a coat drive,
and they sure did,” she recalled. “I knew they spent
a lot of time outdoors, and I thought that perhaps they had some coats that had been gently worn, or perhaps they’d have some interest in supporting the folks at MHA — and they ended up producing bags of beautiful coats.”
At MiraVista, Lee hasn’t been called upon as much to find things, but she has been effective at linking individuals to needed services.
“I spend a lot of time in the community,” she told BusinessWest. “I’ve had the opportunity to just set up
“There’s a lot of talk right now about affordable opportunities for housing. That’s a huge story,
and it can seem overwhelming, and the average person thinks, ‘well, that’s for someone else to deal with. That’s for the politicians or the developers,’” McDonough said.
“One of the things I value about Habitat for Humanity is that we know there’s this huge problem, and we know we have neighbors living in unsanitary, unsafe, or unaffordable housing, and we can’t necessarily solve that whole problem overnight,”
she continued. “But can I show up tomorrow and
do something to help this one family have a safe
and stable place to call home. We take that huge problem and break it down into actionable steps. Someone’s got to go to the store and buy the paint, someone’s got to pick up the paintbrush and put it on the wall, someone’s got to raise a hammer. All these community volunteers come together to make it happen.”
As Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity celebrates
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tables in local parks and meet individuals where they are in terms of wanting to address their substance-use addiction.
“It’s extremely rewarding when you meet an individual and they’re ready to step on that pathway to recovery,” she went on. “They say they’re going to come in to MiraVista the next day, and I’ll say, ‘when you get here, let me know that you’re here.’ And, sure enough, they come through the front door and they ask for me; it’s extremely satisfying.”
And it’s just one of many examples of why Lee is a Woman of Impact.
Throughout her career, she’s always done her job, but she has also gone well beyond the job and into the realm of community leader.
“Her leadership style is characterized by empathy, inclusivity, and a steadfast commitment to justice and equity,” O’Brien said in his nomination, noting that it has been this way since she got her foot in the door — or that man’s shoe, to be more precise — all those years ago. BW
its 35th anniversary, McDonough and her team have instituted the Framing the Future Legacy Society, which encourages donors to consider a legacy gift in their estate planning — another way the nonprofit is creating generational impact.
“Some of our volunteers have been here for 20-plus years,” she said, adding that there’s always a need for more. “And that longevity, that investment of time from the community, is what has built our ability to build good houses for these future homebuyers.
“I only see that growing in the future, so we can help as many families as we can,” she added. “We had almost 80 applications for our last house here in Northampton, so the need couldn’t be greater. My hope is that we can continue to navigate the complex systems, mortgages, construction, and fundraising, and increase our impact as we go forward.”
For leading these efforts to create safe, affordable housing and change lives throughout the Pioneer Valley, one build at a time, Megan McDonough is certainly a Woman of Impact. BW
“A lot of women leaders are so heavily focused
on everybody else that they forget to take care of themselves,” she said. “We talk about all the great things that happen, but we don’t talk about our own trauma that we have to deal with, our own internal struggles. How do you gather the inner courage and the inner fortitude that it takes to be a person of impact, and be able to do it on a continual basis? That’s something we don’t talk about enough.”
At the end of the day, she said, being there for other people requires self-care, so she can wake up the next day and continue to have that impact on the lives of others.
“The model that I live by is, whatever you do, make sure you can sleep at night. And if I can’t, I won’t do it. That’s how I hold fast to what I do and the decisions that I make.” BW
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director, McDonough has hired and mentored dozens of interns through the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s internship program, and a significant number of these interns have gone on to careers in sustainable housing or related industries.
Generational Impact
The application process to be selected for a Habitat home is rigorous, McDonough said, and everyone who meets the criteria is placed into a lottery.
“They must have a minimum income so they can afford that mortgage, and they must good-enough credit so that they don’t have other creditors who are going to endanger their ability to pay their mortgage. And they have to have a low-enough income, under 60% of the median income, so that they have a housing need and couldn’t just go buy a house elsewhere.”
For many such individuals, without Habitat’s help, especially in the current market, home ownership would be simply unattainable.
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get my foot in the door.
McDonough
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Monroe Naylor
Care Starts at Home
Monroe Naylor is no stranger to being recognized. A member of BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty class
of 2016, she was also named a Massachusetts Commonwealth Unsung Heroine in 2020, won the Commonwealth Black Excellence Award in 2021, and was named Community Builder by the Urban League of Springfield in 2022.
But Woman of Impact may be the broadest and most accurate way to sum up her life, which she says has been profoundly shaped by so many of the people in it, from her mother to her husband, Mah’dee Naylor Sr., a pastor who founded Dwelling Place Church in Springfield earlier this year, and their four kids — not to mention community giants like Dora Robinson, who was impactful in her life in her early
The model that I live by is,
whatever you do, make sure you can sleep at n”ight. And if I can’t, I won’t do it.
W34 2024
Women of IMPACT IMPACT A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST
Women of impactful every day, whether on the business plans
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And make no mistake: Monroe Naylor aims to be
Women of IMPACT of a budding entrepreneur, the trauma of a victim of
IMPACT
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST
violence, or the well-being of anyone struggling to be all things to all people. Women of
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST
WOMEN
Impact