Meet Karen Stanley – CARITAS, President & CEO!

Karen began the role of Executive Director for CARITAS in 2000 and took the organization from a 22-week winter-only emergency shelter to a year-round program including case management, a state-of-the-art daytime facility and aftercare services which include central Virginia’s only furniture bank, and a workforce development and life skills program called CARITAS Works that rolled out in 2011. Works was developed to help men and women who have significant barriers to employment – now, 90% are hired in less than 30 days after completion. In 2007, Karen took on the dual role as Executive Director for The Healing Place, a 180-bed recovery program for men struggling with substance use disorders and guided the efforts to combine the organization with CARITAS in 2012, making CARITAS one of the largest human services organization in the metro Richmond area. After a successful $15M capital campaign, CARITAS moved into the new CARITAS Center in December 2020, which includes a 140-bed recovery program for women and 47 sober-living apartments. She is a 2007 graduate of Leadership Metro Richmond, a recipient of the Stettinius Award for Non-Profit Leadership, a YWCA Outstanding Woman Award winner, the 2010 Better Housing Coalition’s “Creative Collaborator,” and was inducted in the Virginia First Lady’s FLITE Hall of Fame for Women in Business in 2012. In 2020, Karen was a Richmond Times Dispatch “Person of the Year” honoree and in 2022, she was the Ukrop Community Vision Award winner.

She has served on the boards of Homeward, Leadership Metro Richmond, the Governor’s Advisory Board for Volunteerism and National Service, and the Vestry of St. James’s Episcopal Church.