Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, referred to as “The Twisted Sisters” by Janet Pace ’80, provided the perfect opportunity for the alumna and her volunteer agency “to put up or shut up.”
In early August 2005, Pace was president and CEO of Volunteer! Baton Rouge (VBR), which the Points of Light Foundation had just named the National Volunteer Center of the Year. Nineteen days later Katrina hit, and “I felt like the world was saying, ‘Okay, you got the award for being the best; let’s see what you can do.’ So we did what we knew volunteer centers do best: connect people with opportunities to serve.”
Janet Pace (second from left) and volunteers work on a recent rebuilding project in the New Orleans area.
The intervention by Pace and her team filled a crucial gap in New Orleans, which had been without its Volunteer Center since July, when it closed for lack of funding. Volunteer! Baton Rouge came to the rescue again in late September, when Hurricane Rita pummeled southwest Louisiana. “We processed 15,000 offers of help from August to December 2005,” Pace recalls.
During these back-to-back natural disasters, Pace says she encountered a glaring flaw: the lack of a relationship between the state government and Louisiana’s non-profit and faith-based organizations, including the state’s seven Volunteer Centers and independent nonprofits that collaborate under the Louisiana Association of Volunteer Center Directors. “Being bossy, I took it upon myself to pound on the state’s door and demand a relationship.”
Her proposal resulted “in one of the most positive outcomes of Katrina and Rita,” she says. Working with other nonprofits and the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Pace helped rewrite the state disaster plan to include response by nonprofits, the seven Volunteer Centers and the State Service Commission, called Louisiana Serve.
Today, Pace serves as interim executive director and director of volunteer outreach for the LA Serve Commission in the office of Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, supervising an annual budget of $24 million.
Pace, who graduated with cum laude honors in journalism and political science in 1980, credits her participation in student activities at SMU with preparing her for a life of community involvement. She was a reporter and news editor on The Daily Campus and public relations chair for the Women’s Symposium, a series that promotes the leadership development of women. She pledged Alpha Delta Pi because of the sorority’s emphasis on philanthropy &dash raising funds for the Ronald McDonald House.
“My passion is volunteerism and the impact that volunteers can make in our communities,” she says. “The success I had in leadership positions at SMU gave me the confidence to accept or seek responsibility in the ‘real’ world.”
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– Susan White