02 Mar Helping Children Flourish

By Elliott Potter

Dawn Rochelle grew up in Onslow County in southeastern North Carolina, in the impact zone of a prominent military presence. The county’s demographics are shaped by Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, a sprawling installation where young service members train on land, in the air and at sea.

Statistically, the Onslow area has one of the youngest populations in the United States, with an average age of 25. It also has one of the highest birth rates in the state. On top of the staggering numbers, natural support systems for young parents frequently are disrupted by duty-station reassignments and deployments.

In a place where the welfare of children requires special attention, Rochelle has answered the call.

As a licensed social worker, she had remained in Onslow County and worked in family services and child adoption. Her personal life was revolving increasingly around her own young daughter. Her professional interests followed, moving more toward the welfare of children. So, when an opportunity came to join a new nonprofit agency with children as its focus, she looked past financial and career uncertainties and made a commitment.

Rochelle became just the fourth employee at the Onslow County Partnership for Children in October 1999. Eighteen short months later, she was named CEO. Since then, the Partnership has developed into one of North Carolina’s model programs for child services. It now has 66 employees with an annual budget in excess of $12 million.

The agency’s founding mission was improving preschool child-care services as part of North Carolina’s Smart Start initiative. Rochelle frequently found herself sitting across a table from Smart Start’s architect, former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt.

She recalled Hunt telling a story about driving near his Eastern North Carolina farm and seeing children playing in a red-clay ditch. “He said, ‘We are never going to get the graduation rate up with our kids playing in a ditch.'”

In the last two decades, the scope of the Partnership’s work has increased by leaps and bounds. Still operating as a nonprofit that runs on both public funding and private donations, it continues its work with early educators and families to improve preschool programs. Other support for children and families includes serving as a branch for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which provides books to fuel the dreams of young children, and providing early Head Start services for pregnant moms, infants and toddlers until age 3.

The Partnership also established the Child Advocacy Center, a vital community resource for social-service and law-enforcement agencies throughout the county to follow up on instances of physical and sexual abuse of children. The center has its own staff to interview victims, conduct medical exams and provide therapy.

While the Partnership for Children became her life’s calling, Rochelle found other ways to give back to the community while sharpening her skills. She founded her own leadership, wellness and consulting practice and became a force in Rotary.

“If you are not growing in a personal way, nothing else around you will grow either,” said Rochelle, now 55.

Her consulting business, Dawn Rochelle Leadership, “started with my need to be well, honestly,” she said. At the time, she was in her 40s and tipping the scales at about 260 pounds. Rochelle had been using her clinical licensing to continue work as a therapist, but said she felt inauthentic when “telling other people to do well in their lives while I was not.”

She tried various weight-loss programs, but progress proved difficult. “When you do therapy, you’re sitting on your butt, and I was working a lot of hours,” she said.

It was a hectic time in Rochelle’s life. She chaired the local United Way campaign and had just completed a Rotary Club presidency. The Partnership program was coming off a hellacious legislative budget year, and her mother-in-law fell ill and died.

Once she made the commitment to her own well-being, finally opting for bariatric surgery and eventually losing more than 100 pounds, she started thinking even more about leadership and wellness.

“The top people in the world pay attention,” she said. “They are not drinkers. They read a lot. They put themselves in proximity to people who think differently than they do. And they try to live a well life.”

Through her leadership program, which is an affiliate of the John Maxwell Team, Rochelle works with families and businesses on topics such as physical well-being, communication and personal development.

With an impressive record of achievement of their own, Rochelle’s family joined her leadership team as trainers. Husband Henry was a standout college baseball player at Campbell University, where he once set a NCAA Division 1 record by hitting five home runs in a game. Their daughter, Taylor, was a member of North Carolina State University cheerleading squads that won two national championships.

Rochelle’s service in Rotary International has allowed her to extend her reach far beyond the traditional child-services community—and travel throughout the world for mission work. Since joining Rotary in 2004, she has served in various leadership capacities, including her present post as District Governor, working with 49 Rotary clubs in 14 Eastern North Carolina counties. Rotary is now organizing clubs around specific causes, not just geography, and Rochelle is forming a club for combating child abuse.

For Rochelle, staying busy has been a way of life. “I have never just had one job,” she said. She has taught classes in graduate programs at various colleges, including East Carolina University, where she had earned her master’s degree after completing undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

“I just let the doors open, and those doors open to other things,” she said. “Having a dad who died early in life, I was never as a woman going to depend on anyone else to support me, ever. I am curious about so many things. God shows us so many things; it’s our courage that helps us walk into it.”

One path she has not taken is politics. Rochelle said she once had thoughts of running for office, but the abuses of social media have discouraged her. “I never wanted my family to be exposed to that, especially being a mom,” she said.

She has a secret for getting things done: “If I assign it as a job to myself, I’m going to carry through with it.” And she has an aspiration that helps her stay motivated: “I want to leave footprints in the sand that show my life was meaningful.”

For more HERStory information, check out our Facebook Page and LinkedIn Page and subscribe to our newsletter below.

We want to hear your story. Your story is my story. Help us empower other women by sharing your story.

Elliott Potter is a staff columnist and blogger for HERStory. He is a former newspaper editor and publisher who lives in Jacksonville, N.C.