Meet our Staff and Consultants

Ellen Hart-Shegos, Executive Director
Ellen Hart-Shegos is the Executive Director of the Family Supportive Housing Center, LLC. With nearly 35 years experience in social services and housing development as a specialized and executive manager, Ellen Hart-Shegos has extensive and successful experience in developing housing and social service resources, managing and operating nonprofit organizations, and providing technical consulting and training services. Since 1997, she has served as a consultant to the Family Housing Fund. She authored key studies on supportive housing and homelessness among children as well as a significant number of publications in the field of supportive housing asset management.

Beth Haukebo, Deputy Director
Beth Haukebo has considerable experience working in affordable housing combining housing finance, property and asset management and resident service planning and development. Ms. Haukebo has managed limited equity and leasehold cooperatives, low-income rental, transitional and senior housing. Her experience also includes working with housing communities to identify capacity and unmet needs, create solution-oriented strategic plans, and secure resources to implement plans. Ms. Haukebo has designed a number of different career exploration and planning programs for special populations. One of the career programs offered at a low-income housing project received a national performance review award. She is the co-author of a service-planning curriculum and has authored several asset management publications. She currently manages the Early Risers and Partnerships for Children programs and coordinates the Healthy Families Network mental health training series.

Greg Theissen, Consultant-Hart-Shegos and Associates
Greg Theissen has more than 30 years of housing development, real estate finance, and asset management experience. Prior to joining Hart-Shegos and Associates, Inc., he was Senior Vice President for Portfolio Management for the National Equity Fund (NEF). Mr. Theissen has managed an asset portfolio for the Resolution Trust Corporation and directed loan management, workout and disposition efforts. He also served as Vice President and Commercial Real Estate Underwriter at Meritor Mortgage Corporation and headed the Multi-Family Housing Programs Branch at the Minnesota office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Mr. Theissen provides consulting services to the Center in the areas of stabilization and asset management technical services.

Sharon Henry-Blythe, Director, Children and Family Policy and Research
Sharon Henry-Blythe has dedicated her professional career to serving children, families and communities with a focus on increasing resources and opportunities for children and caregivers in communities of color. Ms. Henry-Blythe has more than 20 years experience as a leader in managing child care resource and referral organizations and currently serves as a member of the Minneapolis Public School Board of Education. She joined the Family Supportive Housing Center, LLC in September of 2006 to assist the organization in elevating the needs of homeless and formerly homeless very young children. She currently is leading the Infant and Toddler Discovery Project designed to increase awareness of the status of families with children newborn to four years old living in supportive housing. Ms. Henry-Blythe is the co author of Present Vision Future Work: Learning from the Anti-Bias Leadership Project.

Stesha Patrick, Office Manager – Hart-Shegos and Associates, Inc.
Stesha Patrick provides contract administrative services to the Center and coordinating Provider Group meetings and special project support. Ms. Patrick is a graduate from the University of Minnesota – Duluth, which she studied Communications and Psychology, which emphasized her passion for people, diversity, culture, and families. In addition to her office management and administrative duties, Ms. Patrick serves as the webmaster.

Consultants

Benita Amedee, Psy.D. Psychotherapist Practitioner

Dr. Benita Amedee has worked for over 20 years with children, adolescents, adults and families. Her work has included working in shelter, residential and day treatment care for adolescents, including adolescent mothers. She has worked in an outpatient setting at Child Guidance Centers and Community Mental Health Centers providing individual, family and group therapy. She has worked in a family focused program providing in-home parent-child psychotherapy with preschoolers and their families and provided Life Skills and ARMHS services in-home with children, families and adults. She currently works providing outpatient services for clients ranging in ages from 3 to elderly in a Rule-29 clinic. Her focus is play therapy with children who have experienced trauma, therapy with adults who have experienced trauma and are having difficulty parenting their children, and individual and family therapy for issues ranging from anxiety to depression. Dr. Amedee also does psychological evaluations with children.

Abigail Gewirtz, Ph.D., L.P. ,Consultant and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Social Science and the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Gewirtz's research focuses on implementation and dissemination of evidence-based prevention interventions, especially those focusing on parenting of children exposed to violence, homelessness and related traumatic stressors. She is Principal Investigator/Project Director for Ambit Network (formerly MN Child Response Center), a SAMHSA/National Child Traumatic Stress Network Community Services and Treatment center focusing on the implementation of evidence-based interventions for traumatized school-aged children and their parents. She also is co-investigator with Dr. Gerald August on an NIMH-funded effectiveness trial of the Early Risers prevention intervention in family supportive housing. Dr. Gewirtz has written and has presented widely at both the local and national level on traumatic stress, prevention and intervention for high-risk children.

Kim Skobba, Ph.D., Consultant
Kim Skobba works as a consultant providing housing-related research, program evaluation and communications services. Working on affordable housing issues for the past ten years, Kim brings a wealth of experience in designing, conducting and managing research and program evaluation projects as well as experience in fundraising and marketing communications. Kim holds a Ph.D. in Housing Studies with a minor in Family Policy from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Communications from Augsburg College. Kim is passionate about addressing issues affecting low-income families, particularly the housing problems of homeless and precariously housed families with children.