Jeanette Hauck is retiring as chief executive of the Spokane chapter of the YWCA, effective at the end of the year.
During Hauck’s time leading the agency, the YWCA has focused on one of its core missions, empowering women, in part by calling attention to the region’s high rate of domestic violence. It has also put a spotlight on racism, especially since the beating of George Floyd.
"There are times when people say, what does eliminating racism have to do with domestic violence? Why, why, you should really stick to what your work is. Your work is providing support for survivors of intimate partner violence, making sure that they're safe, taking care of those women and those children. And what I would tell you is, you cannot do one without the other."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jeanette Hauck: We know statistically that we serve a disproportionate number of underrepresented and marginalized individuals in this community. So, you have to make sure that you're eliminating racism at the same time you're empowering women.
Doug Nadvornick: You do a social justice emphasis, it's like a month.
JH: Yes.
DN: Tell me a little bit about how that works.
JH: Well, generally in the month of either April or May, we do a lot of racial and social justice work. So, we do an equity for all of it. And we've had a number of different topics. This year we talked about restorative circles. In prior years, we've talked about maternal health and how racism has really impacted the ability for certain parts of our community to get good quality maternal health care. So, that's been important.
We organize that and we invite the community to come in with us and have these really important discussions. Again, it's led really by the community. We're just organizing. And that's really exciting.
And then we do a racial justice challenge, which is something that a number of YWCAs do throughout the country. We also do one at the national level. But the one we do here in Spokane, we really tailor it to bring out some of the very important parts of racism in Spokane. So, if you look on our website, you can see the number of social justice challenges that we've done over the years. And each one has a day where you can pick something for five minutes or ten or more, read something, watch a video. And a lot of those are specifically out of documentation information that's based in Spokane. So, it's educational, it's relevant, and it's timely.
DN: How would you evaluate how Spokane is doing on this over the last 10, 15 years since you've been here in Spokane at the YWCA?
JH: You know, I think Spokane is doing better. I think one of the areas where there's still much work to be done.
I mean, you can even look at a picture of the YWCA. And you can look at it on the face of it and look at all the staff and you'll say, well, YWCA Spokane, where's your diversity? Where's your population that is really reflecting those that you serve? Well, many of our staff may present white, but may not be. We have a lot of individuals who, again, come from populations that are underrepresented or marginalized. You know, that could be someone who has an ability that may be different from a learning perspective. That may be someone whose gender identity is different from what they outwardly present.
So, those are things that we know that we're diverse. Could we be more diverse? Absolutely. And it's something that we try to do.
I think here at YWCA Spokane, I think over the past 15 years that I've been here, I think when I look within our agency, when I look out into Spokane, I think that we are doing better. We do have better relationships with law enforcement. We do have better relationships with those other organizations that are doing the work. And I think that that's what's really important.
Spokane does have a lot of members who don't see racism as being a problem in Spokane. I think that that's unfortunate. And I think that one of the things that it is our job to do and other community members is to raise that up. And when we have social media posts, when we talk to media, we want to make sure that Spokane knows that they can go to our website. It's a safe place to learn. A lot of times people don't want to learn and they don't want to know about racism or how it may be a part of their lifestyle because they could feel shame about that. They could feel like they would be called out instead of being called in.
So we're trying to move through all of that as an agency and make sure that individuals in Spokane have either an opportunity to interact with us as it relates to understanding racism and eliminating racism or some of the other organizations that are in the community that they can interact with.
DN: So then how would you evaluate Spokane in terms of domestic violence, another one of the key pillars of your organization?
JH: Boy, that one's really hard. Because you know, Spokane has a rate that is twice the state average of domestic violence.
People often ask me, why do you think that is? If you look at some of the poverty levels in our community, that's part of it. The other piece, I think, is also reporting and awareness. So people know and can say, hey, this is domestic violence. There's a power and control dynamic going on here. I know what this is about. I'm going to call law enforcement. You can't treat me that way. And I think that reporting is part of having more awareness. And there's the big media push, too, for understanding what domestic violence is all about and report it if you see it.
DN: How well do you think that is working?
JH: I think they recognize, respond, and refer. I think that that is working. We are trying to spread that information, share that information in all sorts of aspects of our community, whether that's in the schools. We have a community educator that is out talking to various different types of businesses. Human resource directors. You know, a lot of times when someone's experienced domestic violence, the first person to know about it may be someone at work. And then when they hear that, how can they support that individual?
I always believe the most important thing that we can do is to look at someone and say, I believe you. How can I best support you?
DN: When your agency announced that you are retiring, you wrote something about leadership and what you have learned over the last four years when it comes to leading an agency, leading a group of people. Tell us about some of your ahas when it comes to that.
JH: Well, I think leadership for me has really changed over the past, you know, let's say 20 years, maybe even 30.
When I think about some of the different positions that I've held throughout my career, leadership has been really focused on that financial piece. Most of my career, I've been a financial executive and not necessarily a chief executive officer with the responsibilities of the entire organization and not just the financial health.
I think for me, it's just really become a moment of learning how to stop and listen. As an accountant, you're very task-oriented and you have something specific that you need to get done in a certain time, in a certain time frame, and the answer 2 plus 2 is always 4, there's generally a right answer at the end. And that's not the way it is now.
When you're leading an organization, there are so many different ways to approach an issue and different ways to help support your staff. Everyone's an individual, but we're all trying to do this together as a collective.
Listening and, you know, I use the word over and over again, using the word pause. You have to stop for a moment and say, okay, let's collect information, let's take a moment to look at it and then move forward.
I had someone in my career give me the analogy of you can take a jar full of sand and you can shake it up, and when you look through the water, you can't see clearly while you're sitting there shaking it. You've got to put it down, let the sand settle to the bottom, and then you can see clearly through the water to see what you need to do next.
