Women to Watch Finalists – Nonprofit Category

(clockwise from top) Natasha Davis, Jennifer Bell, Amy Feath, Yasmin Tomkinson, Karmen Smith

Jennifer Bell, Executive Director of ACCESS of Wilmington’s The Miracle League

As the sole paid staff member of her nonprofit, Jennifer Bell’s day includes everything from fundraising and marketing to finances and program planning.

Despite the juggle, Bell, the executive director of ACCESS of Wilmington’s The Miracle League, says this is exactly what she wants to be doing.

In 2014, she took over the head position of the nonprofit, which provides recreational and sports opportunities for people with disabilities.

ACCESS formed initially to support the opening of a local miracle field and playground. The field sports a rubber surface and features that make it safe for people with mobility issues. Everyone from Wounded Warriors veterans to special needs students from the local schools have taken advantage of the specialized field since it opened in 2013 at Olsen Park.

While Bell organizes two seasons of baseball leagues a year, other groups also use the field for other sports such as soccer and wheelchair hockey. She says they want to open it up to people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

She has a degree in recreation therapy from University of North Carolina Wilmington and a master’s degree in recreational therapy administration from East Carolina University. Bell, who also now teaches part time at UNCW in the recreation therapy department, is certified in North Carolina as a recreational therapist and nationally as a therapeutic recreation specialist.

“I love it,” Bell says about her position, which she calls rewarding. “It’s never a dull moment.”

Natasha Davis, Director of UNCW’s Quality Enhancement for Nonprofit Organizations

In helping strengthen the area’s nonprofit sector as a whole, Natasha Davis doesn’t have to pick which worthy issue she wants to make an impact on.

“One day I’m working with child advocacy issues. One day I’m working with re-entry, and the next day it might be environmental issues,” says Davis, director of UNCW’s Quality Enhancement for Nonprofit Organizations, or QENO.

The group organizes training for nonprofits on topics such as board governance and financial planning. It also gives organizational coaching to groups and provides technical assistance through UNCW students and AmeriCorps volunteers.

Davis started working at QENO as a graduate student – she was getting her master’s degree in public administration – in 2010 and was named director three years later.

But where she started was very different.

Davis studied accounting as an undergraduate and then worked as a finance manager for a manufacturing facility in Wilmington until downsizing eliminated middle management positions, including hers.

“I did some soul searching and knew that’s not want I wanted to do the rest of my life,” says Davis, who then set out on a month-long trip with her sister to Cambodia and Thailand. It was there, volunteering at an orphanage and talking with non-governmental organizations, she decided to take her business background to the nonprofit world.

“I decided if I was going to be putting in sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week,” she says, “I wanted to make sure I was making a difference somewhere.”

Amy Feath, Executive Director of The Carousel Center for Abused Children

In the three years since becoming head of The Carousel Center for Abused Children, Amy Feath has helped the nonprofit regain its footing.

When she was approached for the job as executive director, the group was considering closing, she says. It had lost major grants and faced an uncertain future.

Earlier this year, The Carousel Center received accreditation from the National Children’s Alliance as a child advocacy center, and grant support strengthened.

The center opened in 2000 with the idea that children who need to be seen because of allegations of abuse can be taken to a place better suited for them than the emergency room or investigator’s office. Instead, when a claim arises, a medical exam and forensic exam can take place at the center’s child-friendly environment. Authorities meet them there to determine if criminal charges or abuse or neglect cases need to be filed.

If they are, The Carousel Center also is there after for the healing process. Children go through a therapy program, and families caught in a tailspin – if their primary breadwinner is arrested, for example – receive connection to resources to help them.

Feath has twenty-six years of experiencing in direct victim services.

She previously worked as director of Coastal Horizons Center’s Crisis Intervention Services and oversaw its Rape Crisis Center and Open House Emergency Youth Shelter and its hotlines.

She says she would be happy, however, being out of a job tomorrow because it would mean the end to child abuse cases.

Karmen Smith, Victim’s Advocate for Hope Harbor Home

Karmen Smith is relatively new to the nonprofit world.

It was after a personal incident that she crossed paths with Hope Harbor Home in Bolivia and soon after became a volunteer.

This year, she was hired as a victim’s advocate, helping women navigate the criminal and court systems in order to protect themselves.

“When a person – typically a women – decides to leave a domestic violence relationship or even thinking about leaving, they have to get a protection order in court, seek safe shelter,” Smith says. “I kind of take it from really crazy and congested and help them space everything out. When they come to me, they’re just usually at their wits end, and they have no idea what to do.”

Many times, she says, the women she helps have never had experience with the court system.

Smith, who went to school for business, worked in hospitality before finding her way to Hope Harbor. She also is a member of the Shallotte Junior Women’s Club.

Yasmin Tomkinson, Executive Director of Cape Fear Literacy Council

While looking for ways to get involved with the community soon after moving to Wilmington in 2002, Yasmin Tomkinson saw an ad that the Cape Fear Literacy Council was looking for tutors.

From that to serving as volunteer coordinator and head of the adult literacy program to now leading the nonprofit as executive director, Tomkinson found where she wanted to be.

Tomkinson has an undergraduate degree from Vassar Collage and earned an MBA with a concentration in nonprofit management from Boston University. She previously worked at nonprofits and groups in Boston and Los Angeles, several with an education field.

Tomkinson became interim director of the nonprofit in December and started permanently in the role in July.

“It’s a big step in a new direction,” she says about her new position, adding that it also is a chance for the longtime group to look at its future.

“It’s an opportunity for the Cape Fear Literacy Council to redefine ourselves and honor our traditions and keep doing what we’ve been doing, but also step into new directions,” she says.

Tomkinson says she would like the community to better understand what the group does.

It does help adults who can’t read become literate through free instruction, but it also works with those who need help beefing up their math skills, including prep classes to take the entrance exam for health occupations at Cape Fear Community College, for example.

“I want to have a very clear message that the literacy council, we provide personalized education for adults who need help getting to the next level,” she says.

To view more of photographer Chris Brehmer’s work, go to www.chrisbrehmerphotography.com