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Steppin’ down
After 20 years with Dimock Community Health Center, Jackie Jenkins-Scott prepares to leave the Roxbury institution — but not before celebrating the 16th annual Steppin’ Out
BY TAMARA WIEDER

MOST OF US, when we’re weighing employment prospects, use factors like an organization’s financial stability to determine if a job is a good fit.

Not Jackie Jenkins-Scott. When she took the reins at Dimock Community Health Center in 1983, the Roxbury institution stood on the verge of bankruptcy. Twenty years later, under Jenkins-Scott’s leadership, Dimock has developed more than 110 programs to meet the needs of its urban community. It has growing education and prevention departments, receives more than 40,000 patient visits annually, and is a leader in community-based health and human services.

Jenkins-Scott hasn’t stopped there. The Newton resident, who holds a master’s in social work from Boston University and completed a postgraduate research fellowship at Radcliffe College, is a veritable whirlwind of philanthropy, working with and serving on boards of organizations including the Massachusetts League of Neighborhood Health Centers, the Environmental League of Massachusetts, Planned Parenthood, and Zoo New England. Her lengthy résumé also includes recognitions and awards from institutions and foundations across the city.

Which is why Dimock faces such a tremendous loss when Jenkins-Scott leaves the institution, which she plans to do in the spring — but not before celebrating the 16th annual Steppin’ Out, a Dimock benefit that will feature more than 20 musical performers over its three-day run, including headliner Roberta Flack.

Q: How’d you end up at Dimock, and why?

A: I came to Dimock 20 years ago and just fell in love with the campus, the challenge. Dimock was in receivership then. It had this wonderful history of women, of leadership for, at that time, I think it was about 120 years, 118 years. So I was just very much caught up in this magnificent place, this legacy, and what services were being provided at the time, and I just became very caught up in, how can we preserve this and extend it into the future?

Q: Were you worried about the fact that Dimock was on the verge of bankruptcy? That’s not usually the time to take a job someplace.

A: Sure. I guess I was a young kid. You just have confidence that it can be fixed. So I probably was more worried about the challenges ahead to turn it around than I was, you know, could we do it?

Q: Did you ever expect you’d be there this long?

A: No, I didn’t. And it’s like, 20 years went by so fast. I thought I would be here about three years, and then three years turned into five years, and five years into seven. And here we are, 20 years later.

Q: And now you’re leaving.

A: I’m leaving, yes. I’m leaving in the spring of 2004, and it’s bittersweet, because this is a great institution, and I love it, and I’ve learned so much and I’ve grown with it. But it seems like institutions need to have new leadership and new energy and new challenges. It seemed like a good time to do it; 20 years seems to me like the right number and about the right time to make this change.

Q: Dimock is described as a community-based program. Talk to me about what that means, and how it differs from your basic medical center.

A: Well, [there are] three things that make community-based programs. One is that it’s physically located in the community, and therefore we try to devise and develop services and programs that are responding to the people around us, the people who use our services, the changes that occur in the community that we’re embedded in.

Number two is, we try to have a place and a voice for the constituents that we serve in the organization, in a variety of ways. Some of the ways are, they serve on our boards; we have community members who serve on our boards and our advisory committees. We do a lot of trying to connect with the community in terms of their own needs assessments, what they’re seeking in an organization.

The third way is we try to make sure that the people who serve our clients and our families are reflective of the communities in which they live, and so you will see many people who work here actually live in this community as well, or they have family members, or they grew up here and they moved away. Those are some of the ways that we try to make sure that we’re reflective of the people and the environment that we’re in, the issues that are coming to us from this environment. When we say we’re community-based, those are some of the elements that make us community-based.

Q: You talk about a lot of the staff living in the community or having roots in the community. You live in Newton. Is that a strange line to walk, being at the helm of an institution that primarily serves the inner city, but living in a suburb like Newton?

A: You know, it isn’t for me. I spent almost my entire professional life working in Roxbury. Before coming to Dimock, I worked for five years at the Roxbury Court Clinic, and when I was a student in graduate school, all of my field placements were in Roxbury, so for the past 30 years, I’ve spent about 25 years of that in this community. I sort of joked and said when I leave Dimock, if I don’t work in Roxbury, my car is not going to go — I’m going to have to teach it how to drive! I think that it’s not so much where people physically live, but where their heart is, where their commitments are, and their feelings are. I try to be careful, though; sometimes when there are issues that are very important to this neighborhood and this city, I sometimes do not feel like I’m necessarily the person to speak for those issues. So we have people, for example, we have a big neighborhood-planning group [in Jamaica Plain], so we made sure that the people who represent Dimock on that planning project are people who live in Jamaica Plain. I think we just try to be sensitive to these issues.

Q: What have been the biggest challenges during your time at Dimock, and the biggest rewards?

A: Well, there’s never enough resources. I don’t want to just make it all about money; resources are about more than money, but money is a big, important piece of resources. The needs are great. The priorities are many. And so it is a challenge to sort of balance what we can do and do well and do effectively and efficiently. Trying to sort through that is a challenge.

I think the rewards are the little things that happen: when we get a letter from a parent who talks about how our program changed her daughter’s life, or you go someplace and you bump into somebody and they say, "My son was in your detox and that turned him around." Or the staff members who talk about their community and their work here and their ability to learn and grow and develop. All of those things are very rewarding. And of course there are the big, physical rewards that you see; if you get a chance to visit Dimock, you will come on a campus that’s quite beautiful right now, and most of the buildings have been restored. Those are sort of very visible, physical rewards that you see every day. Every day when I walk into the building that I’m in, which is just a spectacularly beautiful building — it’s one of these old Victorian buildings that we were fortunate enough to renovate, much to its original quality: high ceilings, oak staircases that are 110 years old — I feel very good, even if I’m not in a great mood, when I turn on the campus and just see people looking happy and feeling good about getting their care here, and then you walk into one of these buildings and they’re spectacularly beautiful. You feel a sense of pride.

Q: Tell me about Steppin’ Out and how it’s evolved over its 16-year history.

A: It’s evolved in, I think, three very important ways. The first is that over the years it has really become one of the defining events in Boston. It brings together great diversity in the city, all kinds of music, all kinds of people come, and they’re really having a good time. So it’s grown that way over the years.

The second is that the music in Steppin’ Out, somebody called it sort of a world’s fair of music. This year the theme is Feel the Rhythm, and we have all kinds of music, from Japanese drummers to great jazz to national entertainers like Roberta Flack and Walter Beasley, to great Boston regional entertainers like Nicole Nelson and Kendrick Oliver. It’s evolved into one of these events where talented musicians want to be. We get so many musicians and artists that call us up or send us their latest CD because they want to play at Steppin’ Out, and it’s not like we pay them a lot of money. These musicians come and they can play together, but they can also hear their colleagues and support their colleagues, and when they’re not playing, they get to go and hear one of their colleagues that they haven’t heard in years. It’s evolved that way in terms of the quality of the music; each year it just gets better and better.

And then finally, this is a fundraiser for Dimock, and this raises a significant amount of our unrestricted dollars, which allows Dimock to do the work that we do. As you know, with all the budget cuts and the restrictions of funding available for programs in the state, it is very important for us to be able to have a source of funding that’s there to support our work. Over the years, Steppin’ Out has netted millions of dollars for Dimock. This year we hope to do well, too.

So those are the three ways I think this event has evolved into one of the very unique and special events in Boston. Someone told me once, he said, "Events have five-year shelf lives." He was actually the co-chair for Steppin’ Out in our third year. So we were worried to death when we got to five years. Because by then we had come to depend on the funds. Unfortunately, we have to build the Steppin’ Out revenue into our budget. It’s with great pride that we can say this event has been going for 16 years. It continues to just be a very, very special event.

Q: You’ve been active in so many organizations, committees, et cetera. How do you decide which boards to sit on and which causes to get involved with? Obviously there’s only so much time in the day.

A: That’s a very good question, because I’m passionate about so many things that are important to civil rights and human rights and quality of life. It is difficult. I’m on the board of a very tiny organization called Project STEP, which is designed to help mainly inner-city young people who have the potential to develop into great classical musicians and to go into one of the wonderful symphony orchestras, and I joined that board because I care deeply about opportunity for young people. Someone would say, "You know, you’re very busy, and you’re on this board, and it only has a budget of about $250,000," but it’s really important to support the kind of work that encourages good quality of life. I am a sucker. I end up probably joining more things than I should. One of the things I’ve tried to do is sort of rotate off after a number of years, to both give others a chance to support these great organizations, but also to give me a chance to work on more issues.

Q: Reading your bio can make the average person feel like she hasn’t done anything with her life. Do you consider yourself an overachiever?

A: I wouldn’t say an overachiever, because I think that we end up making contributions where we can, and this is sort of the path that I’m supposed to take. I feel really good about the contribution I believe I’ve been able to make, but there is always more to do. I think that at the end of the day, if we can look back at what we’re doing now, or what we’ve done, and feel good about it, that’s all that counts. I mean, that’s the contribution.

Q: What’s next for you? What happens in the spring, when you leave Dimock?

A: I am beginning to think about it and look around. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, but I hope that I will be doing something that will continue to make a contribution to quality of life and to hopefully this great city of ours.

Q: So you’re not retiring?

A: Oh, no! I’m changing jobs. So I’m actually beginning to think about what’s next for me. I will be working, and hopefully making a contribution.

Q: Are you worried about finding something that will be as rewarding as this has been?

A: Yes. Dimock is a very, very special place that has had an incredible impact on my life. It’ll be a different job, and I know it’ll be rewarding, but it will be hard to find something that will have had the mark that Dimock has had on me.

Steppin’ Out is held on October 31 and November 1 and 2, at the World Trade Center, in Boston. For specific event and ticket information, call (617) 442-8800 ext. 1207, or visit www.ticketweb.com. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com


Issue Date: October 31 - November 6, 2003
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