Healthy Community Initiative

By Colton Kemp for the Northfield News

Upon graduating college, Tom Steinmetz began interning at the Washburn Center for Children in Minneapolis. Five years ago, he became CEO. He also started a nonprofit that brought together mental health organizations and public schools across the state of Minnesota to streamline care for youth in distress. The experiences are not dissimilar to his new role at the Healthy Community Initiative, which he became the executive director for earlier this month.

Steinmetz originally hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He went to college in the Twin Cities, eventually getting the internship at the Washburn Center, where he worked for 25 years.

As CEO of the Washburn Center and director of his nonprofit, Steinmetz spent much of his time building relationships, coordinating with other organizations and doing paperwork. But something was missing.

“I loved the work and I loved the mission, but I realized that I missed the more immediate direct connection of a community organization that was really directly impacting the lives of people,” he said. “I started looking around and met with and explored a lot of different organizations, and I just I fell in love with HCI.”

Specifically, there were three factors he found especially attractive: the mission, the culture and the people.

“The people here are so committed to the mission,” Steinmetz said. “They’ve been so warm and welcoming. The mission itself is something I really believe in and that really resonates with me personally. The culture of the place has been so warm and welcoming and inclusive.”

Steinmetz said the mission at HCI is right up his alley.

“What I think is kind of amazing is that more holistic, comprehensive approach,” he said. “So there’s a lot of other organizations that provide mental-health services or do education or do housing. Where HCI comes in is to say, ‘Alright, how can we coordinate and pull all of those services and resources together so they’re they’re well coordinated?’ Then, they can have a bigger, more comprehensive impact for that family.”

HCI is a nonprofit operating in Rice County that supports the community through its own initiatives and partnerships like facilitating low-cost rehabilitation and weatherization of manufactured homes, promoting safe disposal of old medication and addressing inequity in education through the TORCH and RISE programs.

The nonprofit also has helped bring over $21 million in grant funding into Rice County, consistently sponsors community events and programs, has a program to bring youth voices onto various boards and commissions in Faribault and Northfield, and even has its own grant fund called Northfield YouthBank for Northfield youth age 14-19 to build out their own ideas and projects.

While several aspects of the new job are similar to the nonprofit he started, he said HCI is unique in that it doesn’t actually do the work itself.

“It’s all done through community partnerships,” Steinmetz said. “I think what’s pretty amazing and unique about HCI is there’s this really clear, ambitious mission, but all of that work is done through really strong, creative, trusting, innovative partnerships with people and organizations in a lot of different fields and disciplines and areas. But everyone is coming together with that same shared purpose.”

HCI Board Co-Chair Alyssa Melby played a big part in the decision to go with Steinmetz. She said it came down to, not only his experience, but also his values and work style.

She said he stood out as a candidate, because “Tom’s career-long dedication to children, youth and families, and the ways that he shows up in building relationship with people. He’s just got such a wonderful relational way of interacting.”

As he gets going at HCI, Steinmetz said he wants to expand their impact into Greater Rice County.

“The impact that we see day in and day out is is real and amazing,” he said. “One of the things I really want to prioritize and focus on is saying: How can we take what we’ve learned about what works and how youth and families are benefited from this community collaboration, and keep growing and replicating and expanding that countywide?”

Melby said, with Steinmetz now a member of the team, HCI’s future looks bright.

“The ways that he’s thinking so big picture is exciting at this juncture in HCI’s history,” she said. “I think we’re just really lucky that he is bringing all of his wisdom and experience to our community.”