I sat down with CB, (a.k.a. Cheryl Wohl), AFC’s self-described “public health chick,” to discuss her new position as Director of Foundation Relations, and to hear about what she’s been up to since she began working with AFC several weeks ago. With a new intern interviewing a new staff member, we had a lot to learn about each other…
CB’s story begins not far away from Arlington and our clinic: CB grew up in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland, College Park to become a speech language pathologist. Thereafter, CB dedicated 18 years to various projects of national significance in the communication and speech pathology worlds. It was during this time however that she learned that she wanted to go down a public health path. While becoming increasingly involved with public health work, and once her children were grown up, CB obtained a PHS degree and pursued public health full time. After her family moved to Florida where she would live for the next 14 years, CB worked at the Palm Beach County Health Department as a grant coordinator, and then at the Caridad Center, the largest free clinic in the state. An important aspect of the work CB was doing at the Caridad Center was personally exploring other free clinics around the country to see if these clinics’ programs and structures could be adopted by her clinic. CB came across Arlington Free Clinic doing just that, and fast forward to today; CB is the missing piece to our puzzle.
Part of CB’s position is to maintain and build new relationships with organizations that do or will fund AFC’s services. CB has been here for a few weeks, but is already fully immersed in her work and analysis of how the state’s health care system will evolve post-Affordable Care Act, and in turn how this will affect free clinics. She is very confident that Arlington Free Clinic will remain an integral piece of the country’s health care delivery system. And I can tell that CB, whose enthusiasm and warmth shine just as bright as the yellow leaves of the tabebuia* tree, is sure to become an integral piece of AFC’s team.
-Allysen, Summer Development Intern
*Tabebuia is a flowering tree native to the American tropics and subtropics from Mexico and the Caribbean to Argentina; sometimes called trumpet trees.