NICHQ Employee Spotlight: Karen Chustz

Full name and title: Karen Chustz, MSW

Job Title: Senior Project Director (Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project) 

Time with NICHQ: 1.5 months (Joined NICHQ October 2024) 

How has your background led you to join a children’s health organization? 

My journey to join NICHQ has been influenced not only by my professional training and experience as a macro-focused social worker, with a commitment to systems level change, but also by my own lived experience.  As the youngest of five, and growing up with three older sisters, I’ve witnessed firsthand their experiences with motherhood. One of the biggest influences on my desire to do this work was one sister’s experience during her first pregnancy that was really rooted in what we would consider today a lack of respectful care during her pregnancy journey. And it ultimately led to my nephew being born with physical and cognitive disabilities that could have been prevented. 

How do you plan to incorporate your past experiences in your current role as NICHQ’s Executive Project Director of the Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project? 

I’ve enjoyed a wonderful career journey thus far, working in leadership roles in nonprofit and government agencies, from community to state, regional and national levels. And throughout it all, I rely heavily on relationship building because none of us can do this work alone. Also, transparency to build trust and hands-on engagement with internal and external partners. I think these skills are foundational to how I work with teams and in managing projects. And I think that will lend well to my work here on the Healthy Start Technical Assistance and Support Center (TASC) project. 

What is one goal you hope to accomplish this year leading the Healthy Start TASC? 

I look forward to launching the TASC Community Consortium, which will help us guide and support our team’s work in developing and delivering high-quality resources and experiences for Healthy Start sites. We are also very much looking forward to the first in-person annual meeting with all sites in one space for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s going to be a fun time with everyone in April! 

What does the mission of your team, The Healthy Start TASC, mean to you? 

Our team’s mission, or the proverbial North Star for us, is to provide exceptional service and support to all our Healthy Star partners nationwide and to our partners at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). So, we endeavor to be the premier technical assistance center for Healthy Start projects. 

Who is your professional inspiration when it comes to community-facing work? 

I would have to say Dean Millie Charles, who founded the School of Social Work at Southern University in New Orleans. Her approach to social work in this macro space was instrumental in helping me to shape my view of the importance of that perspective with consideration of the systems and larger context that impacts a person’s trajectory throughout their life. Before the term social determinants was coined, I referred to it simply as the web of life.  So, Dean Charles certainly shaped my professional path, and I will always say that both professionally and personally, my aunt Ruby was and has been a beacon to me in all my endeavors. She was, self-taught with a third-grade education, became a businesswoman in her own right, and provided affordable housing options for low-wage families in her community. So, she was a pillar of her community, and her outlook on life was that she always leaned into the idea that everybody wants to live their best life. It was the simple idea that you treat others like you want to be treated because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. And, to always do your best. So, I continue to aspire to those lessons from her and to be inspired by all that she accomplished and certainly inspired by Dean Charles.