Lexington, KY - Though she spent much of her upbringing moving around - including a considerable amount of time in small towns, with a graduating high school class of 64 students -
Lisa Minton admits she was a bit antsy about what small-town living would have to offer her when she moved from Illinois to Hodgenville, Ky., where her husband had been offered a middle school teaching position.
"I thought, 'What am I going to do?'" she remembered with a laugh. "I got my mom to give me her sewing machine."
Much to her surprise, Minton found herself engaged with the community almost immediately, encountering people and opportunities that would forever impact her life and career. After working her way through a business management degree and various work study and retail employment positions, Minton got her first full-time professional job with the Larue County Literacy Council, a position that gave her experience in grant writing, volunteer coordinating and working one-on-one with adults to help them cultivate and improve fundamental skills. Later, working at the Lincoln National Bank, a regular customer and devoted Rotarian brought Minton an application for a Rotary Exchange program in the first year that women were invited to apply. That gesture led to a five-week trip to England, Minton's first experience out of the country.
"There are things like that that happen because of who you meet and who helps you along the way," said Minton, who credits former state representative Kaye Bondurant, a former neighbor, for taking Minton under her wing and teaching her everything from how to make mashed potatoes to how to network in the community. It was Bondurant who helped land Minton a position as a pretrial officer with the Administrative Office of the Courts, where she ended up working for 14 years. Minton was eventually promoted to statewide field supervisor, which led to her move to Lexington.
Working in the Fayette County court system gave Minton firsthand experience with the effects of substance abuse on the criminal justice system, and she became part of the team that first implemented drug court in that system, an initiative that soon expanded into a statewide effort. The Fayette County court system was also the place where Minton first encountered the effectiveness of the Chrysalis House.
"Women who came to Chrysalis House from across the state, they just excelled," Minton said of the organization, which is the state's largest and oldest licensed substance treatment program for women and their children. When the position of executive director for Chrysalis House opened up in 1993, Minton was selected. Making a difference in the lives of so many women and children is the best part of Minton's job.
"Women are staying clean and sober, working in jobs that support their families, earning their GEDs, living in their own homes and giving back to their community as their lives come full circle due to Chrysalis House's helping hand," she said.
Minton has compared the Chrysalis House, with a wide range of programs and people that make it work, to a fine tapestry, "with countless, diverse, interwoven threads joining together to make a whole." Likewise, she thinks the nonprofit industry in Lexington can be compared to such.
"We're lucky in Lexington. There are so many great programs, and I think the community partners work well together," Minton said. "When I go to United Way functions, and I look around the room at other non-profits that are there, they are each just as deserving as the next one - serving different populations, meeting different needs, but each just as necessary."