She Finds Her Dream Job Helping Others

The faith-based aid agency Tara Stewart heads serves a rapidly changing, low-income neighborhood whose residents are challenged by every conceivable kind of need. Meanwhile, a sluggish economy has slowed contributions to the point where hard choices must be made. The organization is about to move to smaller quarters, and its biggest charitable event has had to be scaled back. Nevertheless, this is Stewart’s dream job, as executive director of Antioch Community Transformation Network, better known as ACTN (pronounced “actin’”).

ACTN was established 10 years ago by Antioch Baptist Church, a historically black church on San Antonio’s East Side. The agency, says Stewart, “was a vision of our former pastor,” the Rev. E. Thurman Walker. “There aren’t a lot of agencies located on the East Side,” says Stewart, “and those that are tend to have a very specific mission,” such as San Antonio Fighting Back, which works toward preventing substance abuse and related crime.

That left a lot of unfulfilled needs for ACTN, which has developed programs for some of the most vulnerable residents of the area, including credit counseling, diabetes education, parenting classes, senior activities and after-school programs. “We are a full-service agency trying to address all the needs of our neighborhood,” says Stewart. Most staff and board members of ACTN are Antioch members, as are many of the business decision-makers who sponsor its events. “This is definitely a ministry for all of us,” she says.

Stewart has attended Antioch for nearly three years, after a co-worker of her husband, Patrick, an Air Force nursing instructor, invited them to visit. “From the minute we stepped in the door, everyone was so warm and welcoming, we felt at home right away,” she says. As a member of the congregation, she volunteered for one of ACTN’s most important programs, the annual Back to School Festival, where students in grades K-12 may get immunizations required for school attendance and are given backpacks stuffed with school supplies. For the past two years, the festival was held at Freeman Coliseum, serving more than 3,300 children at its peak in 2010, providing the back-to-school basics as well as hot dogs and chips, balloons, face-painting and pony rides with contributions from sponsors including neighborhood businesses as well as corporations such as H-E-B and Humana. After getting their shots, dental and vision screenings, the students were “excited and ready to start school on time.”

When Stewart first heard ACTN’s previous director give an end-of-year report, noting how successful the festival had been, she remembers thinking, “That’s exactly what I want to do with my life.” Working at the festival “was my favorite of all the volunteer opportunities I’ve had,” she says. “The benefit is instant: What we do today affects (these students) tomorrow.” Earlier this year, Stewart heard in church that the executive director’s position was open and decided to go for it.

With previous work experience in both the private and nonprofit sectors, it was a move she felt prepared to undertake. At Northwestern State University of Louisiana, she earned a bachelor’s degree in social work, followed by a master’s in public administration at Grambling State University. When Stewart and most of her classmates were interviewed for a promising city-planning position, she was chosen for the job and moved to Greenwood, near Dallas.

Her duties turned out to consist of working with citizens who wanted to build additions to their property, fence their yards or make other modifications that required permitting. Stewart spent most of her days taking measurements or making recommendations to the small city’s zoning committee. “That was not quite my idea of city government,” she says. “When you take classes (about city planning), you have a different picture in your head about how you’re going to improve people’s lives, but you have no idea of what (local government) is really like.”

In hope of making a difference, Stewart went to Catholic Charities in Fort Worth, drawing on her social-work background to become a child-care case manager for clients affected by pediatric AIDS. For clients who ranged in age from a six-month-old baby to a young woman of 17, she served as an advocate, helping their parents or guardians to make connections to as many resources as possible. Predictably, the job was depressing, and when an intern at Catholic Charities told her that SBC (now AT&T) was hiring, Stewart gave her a résumé to pass to a relative who worked in recruitment.

“I was a little sad to be leaving social work, but I wanted management experience and I had none,” Stewart says. The company made her a manager in the billing department in Houston, and after a few years, she transferred to the corporate fraud department in Richardson. There, a volunteer opportunity changed the direction of her life. Her new boss suggested she take part as an allocation volunteer, observing programs at agencies supported by the United Way of Collin County in order to make recommendations to her employer for giving.

After two years in Richardson, Stewart made the move back to the nonprofit world when a position opened up at the United Way of Dallas, where she became associate director of resource development, creating and maintaining relationships within the local telecom industry. Though this was her first development job, the United Way structure made it relatively easy for her to call on corporate executives. “It was intimidating at first,” Stewart says, “but part of the training was to attend presentations by agencies.” The best presentations, she learned, were based on stories about clients whose lives had been changed by their programs.

When making the case for United Way in the offices of senior executives of companies such as Nokia and Nortel, she says, “I could always fall back on the stories I had heard.” She also was partnered with a volunteer who was a manager at Cingular Wireless. “I would give him the giving history of the company we were calling on and supply him with information about United Way he would need to make a peer-to-peer ‘ask,’” she explains. “That way, the invitation to give would be coming from another executive.”

Meanwhile, Stewart had started seeing her future husband. Friends since 1993, the couple had dated off and on and had entered a more serious relationship. Because Patrick was stationed in San Antonio, she made another move to become director of workplace giving at the San Antonio office of the Heart Association of Texas. Since San Antonio “is not the home of a lot of major companies,” she did a lot of traveling to call on corporations in Houston and Dallas, even relocating to Houston for a brief time. “Then Patrick proposed, and I moved back,” Stewart says.

With her return to San Antonio, Stewart not only married but also started a new job, working at TMI — The Episcopal School of Texas, where she was director of annual giving. A devout Christian, Stewart liked that her new employer was “not only a great school but a religious school with daily chapel. It was refreshing to go to a place where it’s OK to praise God.”

Early this year, she heard at church that ACTN’s director was leaving. Stewart applied for and took the position, though she learned that “this is a time of transition.” While ACTN’s chief focus is on the East Side, the Back to School Festival formerly extended its reach, attracting families from all over the city. To save on costs this year, the event will be held at the Antioch Sports Complex and Community Center, 314 E. Ross St. “We’re going back to the basics — just the things kids need to get into school,” says Stewart.

The agency itself is changing. A smaller staff will move to space in the Sports Complex. Though some programs have an uncertain future, ACTN will sponsor its Summer Youth Basketball Tournament and Workshop on Aug. 9-10, and the agency will continue its partnership with SA Youth for after-school programs.

Besides at-risk youth, says Stewart, the East Side’s greatest needs include adult literacy, English as a Second Language, GED preparation and job training. “We need to strengthen our relationships and look into more partnerships,” she says. “That’s the only way (service agencies) are making it these days.” Most important, “This is a time to reassess. We need to start knocking on doors to find out what people need, then look at the programs we have and re-evaluate them.”

Like other Antioch members, Stewart doesn’t live on the East Side and wouldn’t be there if she hadn’t chosen a church and a job in this much-challenged area. “At some point in life,” she says, “you have to roll up your sleeves and do what you believe in. It’s our church’s ministry, and it’s my ministry.”

To contribute funds or school supplies to ACTN’s Back to School Festival,

 to be held Aug. 5 at Antioch Sports Complex and Community Center,

contact Tara Stewart at tstewart@actnsa.org or (210) 378-4853.