Joe Caruso (l), 2007-2008 Community    Impact Division Chair, and Honoree    Eugene Priestley (r).

United Way’s Community Impact Division honored their 2004 – 2007 Chairman Eugene Priestley, for his outstanding leadership before, during and after New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Priestley, a Senior Facility Engineer at Chevron Corporation, has been volunteering with United Way since 1993, focusing mainly on the Successful Children Goal Area.  He began as a program review team member for Childcare, Infants to Youth working closely with agencies such as Grace Childcare Center, the Jewish Community Center, Peoples UMC Center, St. Mark’s Community Center, and both the YMCA and YWCA. In 1997 he took the reins of leadership for the review team, a role that involved reviewing program funding requests, site visits, addressing programs with financial or accountability issues and funding recommendations.

In 2000, Priestley became Chairman of the Successful Children / Strong Families Goal Area and served on the Coordinating Council for the Division (the group that coordinates the work of the United Way’s goal areas and community initiatives.)  He later served as both Vice Chair and Chair of the Community Impact Division, and has been a member of United Way’s Board of Trustees since 2002. 

Through the years and his leadership roles, Priestley has seen the creation of the Success By 6 and School To Career Initiative.  After Hurricane Katrina, he worked diligently with his division staff and Vice-Chair, Joe Caruso, to assure some stability of funding to allow agencies the chance to re-establish themselves while still providing flexibility to meet emerging needs.  Funding shifted  from the prior allocations process to 6-month grants and now includes such non-traditional agency partners as Emergency Communities, Beacons of Hope, and Just the Right Attitude as well as the pilot childcares from Success By 6, Gilda's, Royal Castle, and Happy Kids. All but one of the agency partners pre-Katrina are providing services or are in the rebuilding process - a remarkable success rate when compared with the decimation of the nonprofit sector due to the disaster.

In March 2006, Priestley began an unprecedented 3rd year as Community Impact Chair.

On March 19th, Priestley handed the leadership of Community Impact to Joe Caruso, along with Vice Chairman Pamela Rogers of Xavier University.

“Our thanks go to Eugene for his continued leadership, ability to see new paths and problem solutions, his compassion, sense of humor, and above all, his dedication to making this a better community to live in for all its citizens,” says Beth Terry, United Way’s Executive VP-Community Impact.