Meet the Implementation Board

Rev. Dr Carey Anderson is the Senior Minister of FAME, Seattle, where he has served since November 2004. Prior to his appointment at FAME, Pastor Anderson was Pastor of St. Paul AME in Wichita, Kansas and had been Pastor of the Bethel AME Church in Reno, Nevada. Pastor Anderson holds a BA form California State University, Hayward; a Master of Divinity for Pacific School of Religion Theological Seminary, Berkeley, CA; and a Doctor of Ministry form St Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri. He maintains his substance abuse counseling certification through the National Associate for Addition Professionals.  Programs started during his leadership include FAME Equity Alliance of Western Washington; MLK Fame Community Center in Seattle; and Let’s Get Moving, FAME Seattle. He also served on a number of housing-related boards in Nevada, such as the Bethel Housing Development Corporation, Habitat for Humanity and the Reno Housing Authority.

Paula Carvalho, MIT, joined the Raikes Foundation as program officer on the youth homelessness strategy in August 2019. Prior to joining the foundation, she served as Director of Youth Programs at The Mockingbird Society. In that role Paula oversaw their statewide programing with a dual focus on youth development and systems reform. She also initiated and chaired their Racial Equity Committee until her departure. Before working at Mockingbird, Paula was an Independent Living Case Manager for the YMCA of Greater Seattle focusing on youth transitioning out of care. Having both lived experience in foster care and homelessness and over a decade working in this field, Paula continues to elevate the voices of young people at decision making tables. Paula earned a master’s degree in teaching from Seattle University, where she was also the first graduate of its Fostering Scholars program.

Simha Reddy has worked in the field of homeless health since completing his internal medicine residency at the University of Washington in 2012. Every day as a primary care physician he cares for people who are experiencing or have experienced the trauma of homelessness. Through that experience, he has learned intimately the close connection between health and homelessness, from the practicalities of managing heart failure without a bathroom to the relationship between cognitive impairment and homelessness. The statistics will tell you that people experiencing homelessness have a mortality rate that is three-fold higher than those that are housed, and a nine-fold higher rate if they are on the street. Those statistics, however, don’t tell you the heartache that comes with each of those preventable deaths. The simple answer for why he wishes to serve on this board is that he has lost too many patients to the streets already and feels obligated to do everything in his power to prevent more. Dr. Reddy hopes to see interventions that take trauma-informed approaches, that center the dignity of our unhoused neighbors, and work from the premise that health and housing are deeply intertwined.

Gordon McHenry, Jr. is President and CEO of United Way of King County. A powerful advocate for social and economic equity, he previously led Solid Ground, a Seattle-area nonprofit that works to dismantle poverty. Earlier in his nonprofit career, Mr. McHenry led the nonprofit Rainier Scholars, which champions educational opportunity for young people of color. Before that, he spent 21 years in philanthropy at The Boeing Company, including a position as Director of Global Corporate Citizenship for the Northwest.  A lawyer educated at Georgetown University, Mr. McHenry is a native Seattleite. He attended Seattle University — which in 2013 named him Alumnus of the Year — and, before that, Cleveland High School. He grew up on Beacon Hill, a neighborhood whose character was defined, in part, by redlining. McHenry believes, “Poverty is at the root of so many ills in our community….It steals opportunity and smothers hope. But, as United Way and its partners show every day, it’s something we can beat. It starts with truly centering social and racial equity and then relentlessly innovating until you have strategies that genuinely work. There’s considerable cynicism in the world today, but when you marshal both integrity of intention, and proof of impact, it’s pretty easily dissolved.”

John Chelminiak recently retired as Bellevue Mayor and City Council member.  As Bellevue Mayor, John was involved in the initial legislation setting up the KCRHA. First elected to the City Council in 2004, he is a champion for human services. As mayor, he represented the council on the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board, the Bellevue Convention Center Authority Board and the coordinating board of All Home.  He was Liaison to the Bellevue Human Services Commission, a representative on the Eastside Human Services Forum, the Mental Health Drug Dependency Oversight Committee (MIDD), and on the Governing Board of the Committee to End Homelessness. The Alliance of Eastside Agencies named him Elected Official of the Year in 2011 for his work to preserve human services during the Great Recession: in a time when King County and many cities are cutting human services funding, Councilmember Chelminiak fought hard to add $100,000 to Bellevue’s budget to ensure critical basic needs in the face of the economic recession. John is the senior manager for public sector solutions at Waste Management, the nation’s largest environmental solutions provider. He is the only council member to wrestle a bear, surviving a mauling at Lake Wenatchee in 2010. John holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Washington State University.

Rian Watt is the Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, a Seattle-based public policy research and advocacy organization. He previously served as the Executive Director of The Urbanist, a Seattle-based advocacy journalism organization; as a Strategy Lead for International Large-Scale Change for Community Solutions, a national homelessness nonprofit; and as a Senior Analyst for Abt Global, a public policy research firm, where he worked on a range of housing, homelessness, and anti-poverty projects. In addition to the Implementation Board, Rian serves on the board of Futurewise, a statewide land use organization, and on the board of the Third Door Coalition, a group advocating for Permanent Supportive Housing in King County.

Nate Caminos is the Director of Government Affairs for the Port of Seattle. In addition to his current role, Nate has worked closely with cities throughout the region in his roles as State Director for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, and as Senior Local Government Affairs Representative for Puget Sound Energy (PSE). Nate’s other background includes working as a union organizer with SEIU 775. He also has a strong connection to the business community, having served as Vice Chair of the South Sound Chambers of Commerce Legislative Coalition – representing Kent Chamber (2013-2015), and served on the Bellevue Chamber Legislative Committee (2013-15) and Bellevue Chamber Policy Council (2019), where he worked with the business community on issues including homelessness. Nate has a close personal connection to the work of the Regional Homelessness Authority. He grew up in South King County, where his own family experienced food insecurity and poverty, and he has a close family member who experiences homelessness. He understands the foster care system, having served as a foster parent. Nate is a former Board Member and President of the Seattle Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, a national organization whose mission is to secure and safeguard the civil and human rights of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and all communities who are affected by injustice and bigotry. Nate and his family have made Renton their home.

Dr. Damien Pattenaude has been the Superintendent of the Renton School District since July of 2017. In addition to serving as Superintendent, Dr. Pattenaude has served as a Principal, Assistant Principal, and teacher in the Renton school district. The Renton school district is very diverse (majority minority, with over 90 languages spoken by students in the district). Dr. Pattenaude is a product of the Renton School District: he attended Campbell Hill Elementary School, Nelsen Middle School, and graduated from Renton High. He has also served as Chief Academic Officer for Secondary Schools, and Assistant Superintendent of Learning and Teaching, with duties that include providing direct support and guidance to all district principals, teachers and support staff. His work in the district has always been in service of improving student achievement for all children. Dr. Pattenaude lives in Renton with his family and his children attend district schools.

Vacant

Okesha Brandon is one of the founders of The Washington State Lived Experience coalition, serves as sole co-chair, and small business owner of Red is For Love. During her time in this work with whom she acknowledges as not only her community but her family, she’s found inner strength and beauty within herself. She’s realized that she has value and purpose while trying to prove to others something she didn’t believe within herself. Difficult times became her testimony of the power of unity, foundation, healing, historical factors and so much more. The changes she’s trying to make are stances, revolution, and battles she doesn’t have to take on alone. This is why she shows up loud, proud, and armored with love.

Zsa Zsa Floyd