Meet Kris Jacober

I met Kris and her husband, Joe, in my youth when I signed up to serve on the board of the South Phoenix branch of the Boys and Girls Club.  We struck up a friendship while raising a few dollars via a silent auction and supporting the branch manager.  Kris and Joe’s desire to support children who needed a little extra love led them to becoming foster parents, and providing safety and comfort to 18 children over their career of fostering.  Learning first-hand the lack of community support for foster parents like her, Kris founded the Arizona Association for Foster and Adoptive Parents in 2003.  This volunteer group seeks to make foster and adoptive families stronger, to help them better serve children in Arizona.

Since 2011, Kris has also served as the Executive Director of Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation (AFFCF).  This amazing charity provides funding to foster families so that children in foster care can just be kids – participating in the activities that every child should experience, including athletics, swim lessons, summer camps and more.  They also help ensure a future for kids through their Keys to Success program that provides individualized career planning, education and employment services to children in foster care.

Kris helped to change the landscape for the foster care community when she provided guidance to me in 2013.  At the height of Arizona’s crisis, there were 19,000 children in Arizona’s foster care system.  I reached out to her and Joe with a simple question – “What else can be done to help these boys and girls?”  Kris’s response was straight-forward and direct, as I have known her to be in all of her interactions.  She told me that at that point in time there was no service in Arizona that assisted foster families with basic needs.  “If you could provide a grandmother who just took in her grandchildren with beds and cribs for those youngsters, you could change lives in an instant.”  Arizona Helping Hands took up Kris’s directive and has to date provided more than 18,000 children with a bed to sleep safely on, proving that when you want the best answer, you go to the expert in the field.  In the case of foster care in Arizona, that’s Kris Jacober!

I think of all the lives Kris has impacted over her years of dedicated service.  I know the challenges faced by a nonprofit leader.  It’s truly difficult to have a personal life when your heart is so tied to the work you undertake every day.  It’s an avocation, not a job.  Raising dollars for the cause, promoting the organization, managing people and responding to the needs of clients is exhausting.  As any devoted nonprofit leader knows, running an organization in whose mission you are so invested can be overwhelming, but Kris has carried on through it all.

In every phase of Kris Jacober’s life, she has sought answers and support for children who have been abused and neglected.  She is a rock star who is committed to improving the lives of Arizona’s children in foster care.  Thousands of boys and girls have experienced fun, had a chance for a future, including post-secondary education, and now even have a safe place to sleep because of her efforts.  I am so grateful to have known and worked with my friend Kris for these many years!

Dan Shufelt, the former CEO of Arizona Helping Hands, has been involved in the charity world as an executive and grant maker for many years.

If you enjoy learning of caring people and the amazing work they devote their energy to advance, be sure to sign up for Dan’s blog (see sign-up form below).