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staff spotlight
Name: Emily Campbell
Title: Director of Organizational Effectiveness (OE)
Time at APHSA: 10 months
Life Before APHSA: Prior to joining the APHSA team,
I worked in the secretary’s office as an area administrator at
the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. This position
followed nearly 20 years in public service, with several years
spent working in local health and human service agencies
in both the United States and Europe, primarily in child
welfare. I also served on the executive team of APHSA’s
National Staff Development and Training Association
(NSDTA) affiliate as the vice president of Programs. I
received my BA in Social Work and Psychology from the
University of Wisconsin—Madison and an MS in Health and
Social Services from the London School of Economics.
Priorities at APHSA: The focus of my work at APHSA
is to lead the OE consulting practice team. I am also keen to
continuously improve and share our OE tools and methods,
which were developed through our field work over the years
with our members. As a part of the APHSA executive team,
I also work to identify opportunities to integrate our OE
methods internally and help ensure that our day-to-day work
is guided by both our strategy and a real-time understanding
of our own capacity to meet the needs of our members.
What I Can Do for Our Members: The OE team
provides customized technical assistance to human-serving
organizations and communities. We can partner with leaders
at all levels in an organization to facilitate effective solu-
tions that help improve capacity, culture, performance, and
outcomes. Whether your agency is looking to solve a thorny
issue or problem, or spread out and scale your efforts to
advance up the Human Service Value Curve, we are here to
serve you. We are also here to connect you with your peers
and facilitate the exchange of knowledge about the ways in
which effective organizations can sustain change and con-
tinuously engage the human-serving workforce.
When Not Working: I am the mother of three active
children, ages 15, 12, and 7, which means that on any given
day when I am not in the field, I can be found at the ice rink,
gym, and, more often than not, at our local urgent care!
Married to a Scot, we try as a family to visit our UK-based
family as much as we can. When I have free time of my own,
I like to geo-cache, play the hand bells in my church, and do
yoga. Each year, I also try to honor a commitment to volun-
teering. Recent activities include helping fundraise for public
libraries and volunteering with my family to serve breakfast
to homeless families in my community.
A Lesson My MotherTaught Me: “Assume good
will.” This is a good lesson for people and organizations, too.
Most people I meet entered into the field of human services
inspired by a mission to serve others and seek to learn what
it is like to walk in another person’s shoes. Howwe work
together can make just as much of an impact on outcomes
as the work that we choose to do. On occasion, our effort
and enthusiasm can get misaligned or misinterpreted. By
assuming positive intent, we become more open to working
with others to achieve a common goal.
what Four Oaks, a private organization
offering child welfare, juvenile justice
and mental health services to youth
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa did. Eight years
ago, the leadership determined that it
could not prove that it was achieving
its mission. This spurred the organiza-
tion to begin a journey of significant
business model changes.
Working toward this goal demanded
that the organization stretch. Without
the willingness to experiment with
new ways of working, Four Oaks would
not have the successes it has today.
FOCUSING ON PEOPLE FIRST
Adaptive human service leaders
also share a non-negotiable trait. They
have a passion for the people they
serve—and they never lose sight of
it. Virginia Pryor, deputy director of
Child Welfare at the Georgia Division
of Family and Children Services, says
it best: “The only way to change the
lives of families and systems is to be
inside them. You have to be in there
day in and day out, have to be up to the
challenge to do it.”
Reference Notes
1. The Human Services Summit was convened
by Leadership for a NetworkedWorld and
the Technology and Entrepreneurship
Center at Harvard University, in
collaboration with Accenture.
2. © The Human Services Value Curve
by Antonio M. Oftelie & Leadership for
a Networked World is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International
License. Based on a work at http://
Permissions
beyond the scope of this license may be
available at