“The greatest beneficiaries of the special relationship between Care for the Homeless and Baruch College are the 10,000 homeless men, women, and children CFH reaches each year with life-saving and life-changing services,” says Bobby Watts, executive director of Care for the Homeless (CFH), a not-for-profit headquartered in Manhattan. CFH’s mission is an enormous undertaking—and one made more feasible with the help of its active, 15-member board of directors, five of whom are also Baruchians.
Harry Rosen, longtime professor of management, is in his seventh year as chair of the CFH board (he’s been a member since 2002). During his tenure, Rosen is proud to have welcomed four Baruchians to the board. “No surprise that these are hard times for organizations like CFH,” he says. “Recruiting an energetic and dedicated group of board colleagues with the requisite expertise in financial management, quality management, and marketing/fundraising is crucial to supporting CFH’s mission and ongoing success.”
On the current CFH board with Rosen are Carmine Asparro (’71, MBA ’77); David Florman (MBA ’76), an adjunct instructor in Baruch’s Department of Management; Betty Wong, a Baruch adjunct instructor of entrepreneurship; and Dana Sherwin, a Baruch Leadership Initiative mentor and frequent participant in management department programs.
“We work together, using our core business knowledge, to make CFH a sounder organization,” says Rosen. In addition to providing services to thousands of New Yorkers, CFH operates a shelter that provides temporary housing for 200 single, homeless women.
CFH Executive Director Watts says that it is hard to overstate the importance of the CFH-Baruch connection. “During the last five years, CFH has tripled in size, quintupled in complexity, and had to face monumental changes in the health care system and in the financing of health services for homeless people,” says Watts. “We would not have been able to survive–and thrive–to the extent that we have without the dedicated, diligent, and expert guidance by our board, which is powered by Baruch.”
—Diane Harrigan
To find out more, go to www.careforthehomeless.org.