A Life of Service

Paul McDonald named Phillips Brooks House Association executive director

By Alvin Powell

Contributing Writer

The Phillips Brooks House Association and its new executive director, Paul McDonald, may be a match made in social-work heaven.

McDonald, who starts at the post July 1, has dedicated his life to helping others, most recently troubled and abused girls at a Massachusetts residential facility. Phillips Brooks is also dedicated to helping others, through its huge array of social programs, conceived and run by Harvard students reaching out to the surrounding community.

Together, McDonald and Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) leaders hope they can deliver effective programs to those in need, ensure regulatory compliance and student safety, and establish a cordial and efficient working relationship with the Harvard administration.

"His range of program experience and his extensive experience as the executive director of a nonprofit will allow PBHA to move forward with its programs," said Elisabeth Tomlinson '99, PBHA president.

As executive director, McDonald will answer to the PBHA's student leaders and to its board of trustees. Under a fall 1997 agreement between PBHA and the administration, however, he will also have a reporting relationship with the university on safety, fiscal, and legal matters.

One of McDonald's challenges will be balancing his responsibilities to both parties and continuing the progress signified by the agreement. The search process which led to McDonald's appointment was an indication of the productive way PBHA and the university can work together and both sides hope to continue to move forward with a good working relationship.

McDonald was selected from a pool of 103 candidates. He gained the strong endorsement of every group he met with during the screening process, including students, administrators, and officials from the different social service agencies that work with PBHA.

"I think Paul has more integrity, passion, and dedication than any other candidate," Tomlinson said.

PBHA board member the Rev. G. Stewart Barns, who is the Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard, said McDonald has both the professional experience and the personal qualities to bring people together around Phillips Brooks House Association's mission.

"I see him as an excellent communicator who can work with a wide variety of interests," Barns said. "I'm looking forward to focusing on the mission and future work of PBHA."

A Duty to Give Back to Society

McDonald is currently the executive director of the Residential Rehabilitation Centers Inc. The nonprofit organization operates the Latham School in Brewster, a residential facility for girls with emotional and developmental disorders due to severe abuse.

The organization also runs the Gilbough Centers, community residential facilities for people with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a condition which causes severe eating disorders and which often leads to early death. When established in 1981, the Centers were among the first of their kind in the country.

McDonald got his start in social work while an undergraduate at Merrimack College. He and several other students volunteered at schools in nearby Lawrence. The program wasn't very formal, McDonald said. Volunteers helped out in the classes in any way they could and took children on trips into the community.

McDonald graduated from Merrimack College's Honors Program in 1970 with a humanities major. His first job was as a social worker in the psychiatric ward of a state hospital in Worcester. From there, he worked with the homeless in Worcester, as a social worker for the Division of Family and Children's Services in Buzzard's Bay, as an adoption caseworker and as a treatment coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services' southeast region.

Along the way, he picked up a master's degree in art education in human services from the University of Massachusetts in 1982.

McDonald's dedication and his sense of duty to society didn't waver over the decades, despite the harsh realities of scarce resources, low pay, and clients who didn't always appreciate his efforts.

"You make choices your whole life. You say, 'I can't turn my back on this. I don't know how I'm going to change this, but I'm going to try,' " McDonald said during a recent interview at Phillips Brooks House. "To me, human service is that choice, you're choosing to live and to struggle."

McDonald confesses that a year ago, he hadn't heard of Phillips Brooks House Association. The more he learned about it, though, the more he became impressed with the drive and dedication of the students running the 70 different human service programs.

"The more I learned, the more I was really blown away. They're getting no credit, no compensation, and because of their intellectual ability, the world is their oyster. And they volunteer to serve the community? This is really inspiring," McDonald said.

After 14 years at Residential Rehabilitation Centers, McDonald felt he had accomplished all he had set out to. He said he was looking for a position that would let him work with young people but realized he did not have the academic background that a teaching job would require. The PBHA post will let him use his operational expertise to guide and counsel young people in their service efforts.

"It seems to be a good fit," he said.

Others involved in the selection process agree. Judith Kidd, assistant dean of Harvard College for public service and director of Phillips Brooks House, said she's looking forward to McDonald getting to work and hopes he can bring Phillips Brooks House Association into a new phase in its development.

"This is a man who can work effectively with each stakeholder," Kidd said. "PBHA is ready to begin coordinating its efforts so that its impact is greater than the sum of its individual programs."