Lisa Wolter credits passion and a variety of other factors for her long-running career in the nonprofit sector that’s been sewn “with the thread of women’s health.”
The executive director of Costa Mesa-based Susan G. Komen Orange County was one of five women honored May 4 at the Business Journal’s 22nd annual Women in Business luncheon at Hotel Irvine (see profiles of the other winners, pages 1, 4, 6 and 8).
Wolter has led the breast cancer advocacy organization for just over a decade.
She said she’s pleased that nonprofit organizations such as Komen are recognized as “…working as a business. We balance budgets. We have strategic plans. We have outcomes, and as I said, our profit margin is saving lives.”
Komen’s programs include the annual Race for the Cure fundraising walk, which attracts about 25,000 participants a year, and “Pink Tie Guy,” through which the organization has honored seven male OC corporate leaders who are involved in the organization’s breast cancer-fighting mission.
Past Pink Tie Guy honorees include Parker Kennedy, chairman of Santa Ana-based First American Corp. The program is connected to the Pink Tie Ball, which raises funds.
Corporate involvement in Pink Tie Guy “has elevated the issue [of] bringing breast cancer awareness and resources to employees in the county. It really helped reach into the business community and the employees,” Wolter said.
Building Komen’s board of directors with “wonderful businesspeople” also has helped the organization, she said.
Those businesspeople include Gretchen Valentine, current president of the OC affiliate’s board of directors.
Wolter “is purposeful and thoughtful in selecting her actions as she leads Komen to expand and grow,” said Valentine, managing partner of the Irvine office of accounting firm RSM US LLP, in a letter supporting Wolter’s award nomination.
“Lisa is collaborative with her staff, Komen donors, the board and other stakeholders when exploring new opportunities or enhanced programs,” Valentine wrote. “She guides the organization to fully evaluate the options and make prudent decisions.”
Mammogram Access
Komen also has concentrated on mission initiatives, including getting screening mammograms into where “women shop, pray, play and work,” Wolter said.
The nonprofit has provided mammograms at stores in the Northgate González supermarket chain to reach Latinas and at various area churches through the Circle of Promise to reach African-American women, who have a higher breast cancer death rate in OC than Caucasians.
Multilingual messaging is also part of the initiatives. Wolter said Komen has staff that speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Farsi, Moorean, Tongan and other languages spoken among Orange County residents.
“We have staff that represents the whole spectrum,” she said.
Komen’s OC affiliate also does needs assessments every three years to check survival rates, target areas that need service, and to make sure “our strategic plan addresses those very real problems,” Wolter said.
Many Komen affiliates around the country were negatively affected by the national organization’s decision in 2012 to stop funding Planned Parenthood following pressure from anti-abortion advocates.
That didn’t happen here, Wolter said.
“We retained all of our grants that we were giving to all of our community clinics. We did continue to fund Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties because they were serving uninsured young women who needed breast healthcare,” she said, noting that she and her staff also were able to retain donors’ support.
Discovery
The Wisconsin native and one-time around-the-corner neighbor of former Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig worked in journalism prior to entering the nonprofit world.
She got her start at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel covering “a lot of the issues that were emerging at the time around domestic violence and rape crisis centers.”
Wolter “discovered my passion” during that time and eventually left journalism for a fundraising and publicity position with a Milwaukee-area women’s center. She later worked in fundraising and organizing walks to benefit HIV and AIDS organizations, along with Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles nonprofit group that provides home-delivered meals to people who are homebound due to debilitating diseases.
A headhunter contacted her while she was at Project Angel Food about becoming head of the Komen OC affiliate.
