Life before Alzheimer’s San Diego
“Six months after graduation, I loaded up a moving truck from Houston to San Diego and have been here ever since.”
Fourteen years after the decision to move to California, Regina’s path has led her to becoming our Director of Grants & Advocacy. She’s been with us since the beginning in 2015, but her experience in the nonprofit world goes back further than that. For the first ten years of Regina’s career she worked directly with clients as a social worker, with her journey having started in 2005 and includes working with elementary school children, teenagers, and homeless seniors.
She got her Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) at the University of North Texas, and later followed that with a Master of Social Work (MSW) from SDSU. This education helped her gain a “deeper understanding of the client experiences.” Regina’s great-uncle had dementia, and after initially working with this population during her graduate school internship in 2013, Regina decided to pursue a career in the field.
Formation of the Grants & Advocacy department
During the early days of the organization, grants made up a small portion of the budget, and there was no staff member dedicated solely to grant efforts. In 2016, Regina was asked if she was interested in shifting her role from direct client services to grants, and thus the department was born. Grants now comprise about 20% of the organization’s budget, in large part to Regina’s efforts towards funding opportunities and growing the department. In 2021, a second department member was added, our Grants Specialist, Maddie Shureen. The same year, the team secured two significant federal grants, which are still active, one from the Administration for Community Living and another from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Regina’s duties include identifying and securing grant funding to help the organization in various ways, but most importantly to keep our programs free to the public. On the advocacy side, she works with local elected officials to “bring awareness to legislation that impacts our clients.” Our organization also partners with Alzheimer’s Los Angeles and Alzheimer’s Orange County for advocating on behalf of clients at the state level. Advocacy efforts have increased in recent years, with Kristen Romea, one our Clinical Services Managers, also helping out in this regard. The team’s first advocacy alert was launched recently, which was a call for support of California AB 518.
Regina’s Perspective
Regina appreciates how passionate everyone at the organization is about the mission, and notes that “through all the changes [she has] seen over the past 10 years, that is one thing that has remained constant.” The organization appreciates her equally, considering grant funding allows for the development of new programs for the community, the hiring of more staff to run those programs, and much more.
Regina is an invaluable part of Alzheimer’s San Diego, as she’s able to pull from her experiences and effectively portray client needs to potential funders, as well as to elected officials when discussing state laws/legislation that impact clients. Although she doesn’t interact directly with clients often these days, she loves hearing stories from care partners about how our programs improve their lives. She also recalls when she worked with our ALZ Companions Respite program and enjoyed “connecting those caregivers with volunteers and watching many of them develop long-lasting relationships.”
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By Braulio Ambriz
