ANNOUNCING THE WOMAN OF THE MONTH

Meet June’s Fort Worth Woman! Carol Klocek is the Chief Executive Officer of Center for Transforming Lives. With Carol at the lead, Center for Transforming Lives “works to disrupt the cycle of poverty through group financial education, individual coaching, career readiness, and small business development resources” for women/children in our community. Women and children facing poverty need more than just a game plan, they require compassion from the heart to help them heal along the journey. Carol’s past experiences not only propel her forward in this mission, but she does so with the empathy necessary to fully create long-term sustainability.

When Carol describes her childhood she states, “The most influential aspect of my early life was coming from a large, Catholic, working-class family. My father worked hard but didn’t make enough to support such a large family and we struggled. My mother suffered from depression, which left us on our own. After school, the youngest children were my responsibility, including cooking dinner and cleaning up. After I’d gotten the younger children to bed, I was able to focus on homework or go to a neighbor’s house to babysit.” While the generosity of their church often brought food and clothing, Carol describes that she felt ashamed that they needed it. She states, I dreamed of a life where I would be self-sufficient and never have to rely on others.” The weight of adult responsibility rested on her shoulders at such a young age, eroding at her childhood. Constant tension, anger, and fear from not having enough were daily themes of her life.

As she held the daily routines together for her siblings while simultaneously hearing doubt from family members regarding her dreams, Carol began to feel small. Babysitting, particularly the family she worked for, became her window to a bigger, outside world. Carol describes this experience further, “That babysitting job became my lifeline. Meg was a night nurse at Harris downtown and her husband traveled for work.” Her neighbor became someone in her life who could see past Carols’ barriers and through to who she was – a human full of desires, big dreams, and a goal to achieve more. She finally had someone who believed in who she was, not just the filter of her surroundings.

Carol states that after a college campus visit in high school, “Meg knew how difficult my home life was and through her encouragement I eventually created a plan to go to college and leave behind my experience of poverty and associated traumas. What I most focused on, and I think all of my siblings would say the same thing, is that I didn’t want my own children to experience what I did. I didn’t realize how long that journey would be.”

Carol earned many scholarships as well as grants and began to work full-time alongside her school work. She completed college, eventually earning two Masters’ degrees in both Social Work from the University of Texas at Arlington and Business from Texas Christian University. While graduation brought new potential, capturing the success of the next steps proved difficult. Despite working three jobs and even renting the floor of someone’s closet to have a roof over her head, Carol continued to march ahead and in doing so, she began to find her foothold in the path forward.

Carol describes, “My early career was spent working with children who had experienced severe abuse or neglect and who had resulting behavioral and emotional disorders. I really began to find my way forward when I began working with these children. These kids were growing up in the same types of home I had, and I realized how much poverty contributed to all our situations. It made me want to address the root cause. I learned early on that poverty and trauma were the root causes for these disorders in children, but I was also frustrated because our system was set up for intervention with the child, not the family. Children would go through intensive and expensive therapeutic programs, only to return to a family that was in the exact same circumstance as they were before the child left.”

Using a combination of her past experiences, Masters degrees, and overall drive, Carol worked with Catholic Charities, Presbyterian Night Shelter, and eventually, in 2009, she stepped in to the executive role of what was then called the YWCA Fort Worth and Tarrant County. Carol describes further, “our organization, locally founded in 1907, had been serving women and girls from the beginning but we were ready to make more of an impact. In 2013 we went through a transformative strategic plan with the Board of Directors and asked ourselves important questions like:
-What are the underlying reasons that 50% of children who experience homelessness are under school age?
-Why are single mothers with young children at highest risk for eviction?
-What problem or problems are we trying to solve?
Our clear answer is that we are working to solve the cycles of poverty and trauma for women and children. So we decided to grow.”

Carol proudly states, “my childhood and Meg are two of the reasons I have dedicated my entire career to helping women with children move out of poverty and in to stability, self-sufficiency, and even prosperity.” Today, 115 years after being founded, Center for Transforming Lives works alongside women and their children experiencing poverty to create a cycle of financial and emotional well-being within the family. CTL provides comprehensive homeless services (including traditional child care and Early Head Start, family housing, and trauma intervention services), early childhood education, as well as economic mobility and clinical counseling engaging approximately 3,500 individuals from about 1,200 families in our county.

As the CEO of the organization for the past 14 years, Carol describes what keeps her motivated as, “the successes of women and children – big and small. It might be hearing about a new job or new business that got started, or hearing a mother and child have a conversation about what she learned that day in one of our centers. Big moments in which we can see that they are on the road to reaching their dreams or littles ones in which we can see they are just enjoying each other as a family. That’s what keeps me hopeful and always ready for what’s next at CTL. We believe that when a woman and her children who are facing poverty have access to services they need from a centralized provider in a way that is compassionate, trauma-informed, and two-generational, we are able to disrupt the cycle of poverty.”

When reflecting on Fort Worth as home, Carol remarks on the history and feeling of its people as its greatest attributes. Carol states, “I love the history of Fort Worth, especially the history of the everyday development of the city. I feel like in Fort Worth, everything is possible. We are big enough for a huge mix of people and backgrounds, but small enough to know who to call when you need help.” Help is exactly what Carol and Center for Transforming Lives offers to some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Each month a woman is asked what her word is to describe her impact as a businesswoman on our city. Carol chose a word that not only has yet to be used, but also perfectly describes the power of her mindset – “Mamma”. From the heart Carol humbly describes further, “Through my work, and including my own children, I have put literally more than 1,000 individual children to sleep at night. Sung them lullabies, tucked them in. My most common work nickname is “Mamma Carol”. As I see it, it all comes down to the mammas and how they do or don’t have the opportunity to raise their children to feel safe and loved and to belong, while also living into their own well-being. That’s my work.”

Carol’s connection to her work is rooted in her own background, craving to never rely on others for basic needs. She now provides for others in Fort Worth to give them the same superpower – autonomy rooted in both knowledge and purpose. Using a full-family approach to care and education Carol and her team at Center for Transforming Lives are doing just that, transforming lives in our city one family unit at a time. CTL has been serving Fort Worth for over 100 years and you are welcome to visit for a tour to gain more information regarding their services. If you’re lucky, you may get a chance to meet “Mamma Carol” yourself!