The Progress Foundation Team
We believe in developing our employees, and giving them every opportunity to advance into management positions. At Progress Foundation, every open position is posted in-house, and every internal candidate is interviewed. Most of our Assistant Directors and Program Directors were internal hires. They started working with us as part-time, on-call employees and moved through the ranks into management positions.
Patrick Mahoney – Relief Counselor
As a student of language & literature, I stepped into the working world with a simple aim: work with people. Working as a counselor allows me to do this; to work with individuals that have a diverse set of backgrounds and a diverse set of perspectives. At Progress Foundation, we work with a population of people who live at the outskirts of our culture. As with many of the clients, I moved to the Bay Area from a distance and with the aim of getting comfortable. At times I think, “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.”
I had worked full time as a residential counselor and enjoyed seeing the gradual growth and progress clients made. Yet it wasn’t until years later after a traumatic brain injury that I learned the genuine amount of effort, discipline, and time required to truly arrive at a place of comfort in the our world, to arrive at a place of acceptance and appreciation. I had the opportunity to return to counseling with a fresh perspective. At this point, I changed my focus, approaching the job a novel sense of empathy. While TBIs and traditional mental health diagnoses differ in many ways, they both require the maintenance of an optimistic perspective, a form of positive thinking. By investing time and effort in the most routine tasks, the most basic of social interactions, it becomes easier to feel more and more self-confident, more and more capable. And with these changes I have seen empowered individuals move into lifestyles that help inform our communities and help leave stigma but a myth.
Efren Sandoval – Program Director
I am a Program Director for Progress Foundation. I run a 10-unit Residential Acute Diversion Unit, “La Posada”. We work together with clients in running a safe therapeutic environment, providing the best service within our abilities. Helping others is something I love to do and I get to do it at a place where I love to work.
I started working at Progress Foundation in April of 2001, as a relief counselor. With past work experience in different fields (Accounting, Graphic Design, and Welding), I wasn’t sure I would get hired. It wasn’t the work experience they were looking at, it was my life experience. The service provided here at Progress Foundation is that you treat individuals (clients) as you would family members. This came easy for me at first, but the thing I least expected was how much I began to learn about myself. With the many challenges in this world humans have gone through, we don’t get many opportunities to actually work at a place where we also get to work on ourselves. The wealth of knowledge I gained working here surpasses anything I have learned before. I believe I am a better person today thanks to Progress Foundation. I have seen co-workers go through the same experiences as we all enjoy and love what we do, making sure we pass it on to our Family (the clients).
Jordanne Genato – Counselor
I started at Progress Foundation as a relief counselor and was promoted to a full-time counselor at Avenues. Progress Foundation has given me the tools I need to be the best counselor possible. The administration is supportive of each of my coworkers individual style when helping clients. The leadership understands that burnout is very common in the mental health field and give us plenty of benefit time to get the rest we need. It is clear that every level of the corporation from the clinical director to the relief counselors care about the Client and their needs. It has been a rewarding and eye-opening experience to work among those who are so strongly dedicated to helping Clients in need.
Jim Roberts – Program Director
Progress Foundation was my first job when I immigrated to the USA 12 years ago; I was employed as an Agency Counselor before moving into a leadership role as Assistant Director at the Avenues. My background was as a Drama therapist for the National Health Service working with inner city youth in London. I received a Master’s in Drama and Movement Therapy from the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2000. My career in San Francisco has encompassed working with both children and adults. I left Progress Foundation in 2006 to run the day treatment program for adolescents at Edgewood Children and Families Center for three years before returning to work with an adult population as a Program Manager for Baker Places. In 2010 I was pleased to return to Progress Foundation as Program director for Progress House. In the last six years the Agency has supported me in developing the Transitional Age Youth program at Progress House, focusing on identifying young people aging out of children’s services and requiring adult residential care. Working with young people has always been a passion for me and the opportunity and support from the Agency to develop a new area of programing focused on an underserved population is one of the reasons I remain dedicated to the mission of the Foundation. Progress is a place where risks are taken, it’s an Agency that is always looking to develop its scope of practice and be responsive to the ever changing needs of the clients we serve in the Bay Area. It’s an encouraging environment that promotes the sharing of ideas and supports initiative from its clinicians to improve its services.
John Delaney – Relief Counselor
Employment at the Progress Foundation these past two years has been an exceptional experience for me in several key ways. Firstly, I’ve found the work environment to be both supportive and positive – in general my co-workers seem to be happy to work here. As a counselor, while the field itself can be challenging, it has also been an enriching and rewarding experience for me – particularly in my daily interactions – watching our clients learn, grow and progress. As a Relief Counselor specifically, I’ve enjoyed maximum flexibility in my work schedule which allows me adequate time to devote to important areas of my life when necessary. These are just a few reasons why I hold my experience at Progress Foundation in such high esteem and recommend the job to qualified candidates enthusiastically.