Meet Lisa Kroencke | CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lisa Kroencke and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lisa, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
At The Magdalen House, Lisa has built a list of necessary ideas, often called the “Vision for Growth.” She ardently believes that these are the keys to increasing awareness and shattering the stigmas around alcoholism and reaching more individuals with alcoholism and their families to continue to build a thriving community. It is also from these ideas and values that she leads her team.

We are all in this together.
This is a principle Lisa learned early on in her recovery from alcoholism that also applies at the organizational level. She created a team at The Magdalen House that has built this agency, and each of its members leads with the mission at the center of all they do. Instead of working in silos, which Lisa believes contributes to inefficiency and redundancy, Lisa has built a culture at The Magdalen House that encourages collaboration and creativity. She also believes this to be true within the nonprofit sector, so she established and grew the Resources and Education program at The Magdalen House to become better partners with other organizations in the community. Lisa believes that community resources increase when organizations engage with one another, creating innovative solutions and stimulating growth within the nonprofit sector.

Do not be afraid of failure.
Lisa strongly believes that leaders must understand that those who don’t act risk failure or irrelevancy in a world of rapid change. Minor changes are essential, but sometimes it is necessary to take a risk to realize the vision for growth. She is always prepared to pivot from a plan early on if it is not working and go back to the drawing board to find a better solution. Though not all projects have gone according to plan, their failures have ultimately led to more innovative and dynamic programs that have not only worked but have flourished. Through her experience, she has found that losses are often precisely needed to produce success. Her vision for growth now has certain expectations, and they are big and bold. She strives to continue double-digit, year-over-year growth, duplicate the agency model in other areas of North Texas, and expand out of the state in a few years. These are bold plans because she is passionately dedicated to helping as many women and their families as possible – just as someone did for her many years ago. And she is paving the way through education and programs to grow the community and empower more alcoholic women and their families.

Embrace your purpose.
Lisa has found this last point the most important in her personal and professional life. It’s also at the heart of defining a robust recovery community. Lisa doesn’t want to live in a world where alcoholism is seen as a curse, a behavioral problem, or an issue of morality. She strives to educate and lead by example – alcoholism is the best thing that has ever happened to her. Because of her experiences, Lisa is uniquely qualified to help other alcoholic women and their families. As Executive Director of The Magdalen House, she lives her daily purpose – one woman at a time. The ripple effect of her devotion to this agency and its programs affects thousands of people – and the community thrives – not in spite of alcoholism but because of it.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
In 2007, Lisa was newly sober and looking for ways to grow in her recovery and help other alcoholic women. She learned through a friend that she could attend classes and meetings at The Magdalen House.

For several years, she served as an active volunteer, which eventually led her to an invitation to serve as board chair in 2010, where she served for five years. Utilizing her strong business background and diverse fundraising experience, Lisa immediately expanded and diversified the Board of Directors, creating fresh input, ideas, and increased resources. While remaining mission-focused and goal-oriented, she worked with her fellow members to develop a solid three-year strategic plan for growth.

In 2016, The Magdalen House operations had hit a low spot; morale and programming had deteriorated due to poor leadership. The Board of Directors recognized the agency was at a critical tipping point and asked Lisa Kroencke to leave her position as the Board Chair and begin working as Executive Director.

Upon assuming this new position, Lisa set clearly defined goals with the new Board of Directors Chair, Kay Colbert. New by-laws were written in the first two years of restructuring the business, and the two women worked to establish a solid business plan. With a new development plan and a strong case for support, she began raising the funds needed to grow the organization.

She quickly determined that a new facility was needed, as the existing structure was rapidly deteriorating and would not fulfill the vision for growth. Parallel to growing the core business, she initiated a feasibility study and assembled a Capital Campaign team to raise funds to build a new facility. Her dream became a reality in 2021 when the agency moved into its beautifully renovated, historic home on Gaston Avenue, which increased its in-house program capacity by 40% and meeting capacity by 100%.

Fast forward to 2023, the methods created in those early years of her tenure have produced tangible results. Since 2017, The Magdalen House has grown tremendously. Most notably, the agency has implemented two new programs, Next Step and Resources and Education, which, combined with the First Step and Community programs, have enabled it to serve thousands of alcoholic women and their families in the North Texas community and beyond. She also grew the nonprofit’s team of three to 24 staff members and led hundreds of trained, experienced volunteers. Under her leadership, the agency’s revenue has increased by 204% to more than $2M in 2021. And now, she is spearheading another dream- with 1 in 7 men being alcoholic; there are an estimated 391,000 alcoholic men in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. With services for men being such a critical need, The Magdalen House is introducing the addition of the Men’s community programming under Lisa’s leadership. Services ranging from fellowship events, 12 Step recovery meetings and workshops, volunteer opportunities, our Family Support Group, and the Men’s Community Group will be available to men beginning in July 2023.

Based on her personal experiences, she understood that no-cost acute care in the Dallas-Fort Worth community was needed to manage the immediate crisis alcoholic women and their families faced. Still, she also recognized that a critical component to achieving long-term success for The Magdalen House’s future growth was to build a robust, strong community. Our program philosophy is simple and straightforward – a community of recovered alcoholic women is uniquely qualified to guide and equip newly sober women to find a solution. So, we provide a space for women who are motivated to change to those who are living recovery at the highest level, making a life of recovery attractive and within reach. Our strength comes from our collective wisdom, and our success is primarily based on our ability to involve the broader community in our mission to help women recover.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

It is hard to narrow down to one recognition because there are many, and the gifts appear frequently! But two have had the most significant impact.

First, the remarkable impact recovery has had on Lisa’s family.
What was once the thing ” not talked about out loud” has become one of her family’s greatest strengths. Alcoholism tore her family into tiny, unrecognizable pieces.
Today – faith, recovery, and helping others have become the glue that binds her family together. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says it best, “The alcoholic’s past thus becomes the principal asset of the family, and frequently it is almost the only one! …Cling to the thought that, in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have – the key to life and happiness for others.” Her family thrives on these principles today.

And an equally beautiful gift is watching women transform in such a short time, to become fully awake and live a life with purpose. According to Lisa, “There is nothing more joyful than witnessing a woman on her knees saying a third step prayer with a newly sober woman or watching a newly recovered woman laughing with her family, seemingly without a care in the world. Those moments of witnessing the rebirth of women and their families are powerful and an overwhelmingly beautiful gift of recovery.”

Today, she has a deeper connection to her family. She gets inspiration from the women in recovery who surround her daily, the joy of witnessing miracles at home and work.

Website: www.magdalenhouse.org

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Image Credits
Omniplan (House pictures), The Magdalen House (Retreat photos)