Here to Serve’s Kathleen Quintas was inspired to found her organization from her own experience with caregiving.

While holding a full time job, Kathleen’s son was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while her husband was six months into his treatment for leukemia. To make an impossible situation even worse, they were being treated across town for each other her son at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif. and her husband at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, Calif. She learned firsthand the intense emotional, spiritual and mental stress that takes place when caregiving.

While nothing prepared Kathleen for her role as a caregiver, her experience as a caregiver gave her the necessary tools to help others in the similar situations of caring for a child or spouse and helped her establish Here to Serve. Her career in marketing, communication and fundraising laid the groundwork for the organization, and she also handled the philanthropic and volunteer initiatives of a California nonprofit serving children and families in crisis with social and mental health services.