Sue Else

President

Sue Else has been the President of the National Network to End Domestic Violence since 2006. She started her career in the domestic violence field as a volunteer at a battered women’s shelter in Ames, Iowa called Access while earning her Bachelor’s degree psychology from Iowa State University. She was eventually hired as the volunteer coordinator at the shelter – one of two paid staff positions – and quickly became the Executive Director. Later, she moved to Kansas City, Missouri and served as President and CEO of Hope House for 18 years. When Sue first started at Hope House, it was a small organization that operated from a small, dilapidated house in Independence, Missouri. At that time, Hope House’s services included a 25-bed shelter, food, clothing, crisis intervention and limited advocacy. During her tenure, however, Sue transformed Hope House from a revolving-door program into a comprehensive organization designed to meet the full spectrum of needs for victims of domestic violence. Under Sue’s leadership, Hope House grew from an organization with 13 staff members and a $260,000 budget into an organization with more than 70 staff members and a $3.5 million budget. After a successful $2.3 million capital campaign in 1993 and another successful $4 million capital campaign in 2000 under Sue’s leadership, Hope House now has two shelters that have beds for up to 104 women and children every night, and a licensed Early Childhood Center at each campus. Services offered by Hope House today include advocacy and case management, individual and group therapy, substance abuse counseling, court advocacy, civil legal assistance and representation, safe exchange of children between custodial and non-custodial parents as well as supervised visitation and therapeutic visits with non-custodial parents, teenage prevention program, training for law enforcement, medical professionals and community groups, permanent housing assistance, life skills workshops and more. Sue also established a healthcare advocacy program at Hope House, and participated in developing and implementing a metro-wide healthcare program as a collaborative effort between the six domestic violence agencies in the Kansas City area. The program provides training to medical personnel on how to appropriately screen patients for domestic violence, provides on-site advocacy and support to victims, and supports staff within the healthcare facilities that may be victims themselves. When the metro-wide program was implemented in 2002, it was only the second of its kind in the United States. The enhancements in services to victims of domestic violence that Sue has initiated during her career contribute significantly to the quality of women’s lives in our communities. Victims of domestic violence require more than temporary housing and crisis intervention in order to overcome the effects of domestic violence, and Sue has been instrumental in improving services that meet those needs.