Eric Ward is not the guy people rush across the room to meet – and he’s OK with that.
A self-described introvert, the 54-year-old executive director of Family Counseling Service in Aurora likes to work behind the scenes, figuring out how to fix a problem, build a program or make a system work better.
That leadership style, he knows, is what helped grow a struggling nonprofit into such a successful mental health counseling center. In his 16 years at the helm, Family Counseling Service went from a $1.3 million budget to a little over $7 million and increased the number of clients served from 600 to over 7,000.
But at the end of the month Ward is turning this leadership over to Jason Andrade, a colleague he’s spent the past six years preparing to succeed him, and whose personality is quite the opposite of his own.
“Jason is the person everyone loves to see,” says Ward, referring to his successor’s easy smile and outgoing personality that has helped Family Counseling Service build bridges and partnerships across the community.
“I love this organization, and leaving it behind is hard because I also love what we have done here. But it is time to let Jason do what he does.”
And what Andrade, currently vice president of organizational development, does is exactly what Family Counseling Service needs at this time in its 101-year history in the Fox Valley, insists Ward.
He and Andrade, who were raised in homes with little money and learned the value of hard work early in life, met nearly a quarter-century ago when they were working with the Association for Individual Development. As their careers developed – Andrade became director of the Kendall County Health Department for 15 years, Ward’s part-time job spearheading FCS’s men’s domestic violence group eventually led to this leadership role – they often exchanged ideas and even partnered on some programs.
So when Ward had a chance to bring Andrade to the Aurora nonprofit in 2020, he already knew who he would train to someday fill his shoes.
There’s no question they will be big ones to fill.
Since taking over as executive director in 2010, Ward has reshaped the nonprofit around a simple philosophy: Figure out what the community needs and find a way to provide it. He streamlined or got rid of programs that were consuming administrative resources without adequately serving clients, turned down state grants that came with restrictions on whom the agency could help, expanded services and made a point of accepting insurance, including Medicaid.
All of which was done with only an INC Mental Health grant and surprisingly little emphasis on traditional fundraising.
“We run (Family Counseling Service) like a doctor’s office with a nonprofit mentality,” says Ward. “We see clients and bill insurance. We run lean and grow where it is needed.”
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That businesslike approach has allowed Family Counseling Service to pay off the mortgage on its building at 70 S. River St. in Aurora 13 years early and still be “in a remarkably good financial state with financial reserves,” he adds.
That leadership, says Scott McCleary, who has been on the Family Counseling Service board since 1997, “has brought growth and financial stability” to this nonprofit organization that was founded by Aurora citizens in 1925 to deliver food, clothing and heating coal to the needy.
“As a result, FCS has been able to respond to the constantly changing mental health needs of the Aurora and Kendall County community, through innovative partnerships and programs,” McCleary continues.
Ward admits he’s “not your typical executive director … I’m more like Oz behind the curtain sitting in my office scheming things for Jason to go out and do that will translate into more people being served and more meaningful work for the staff.”
Which is what Andrade has been doing, notes McCleary of the newly-named executive director who has proved so successful at “building relationships with individuals and government officials to provide residents with-much needed mental health services.”
Those partnerships – with schools, hospitals, social service agencies, as well as the courts, jails, probation and law enforcement systems in Kane and Kendall counties – is all about building trust in pockets of our communities that had not been there before, says Andrade. Regardless of age, income, sexual orientation, religion or ethnicity, the goal is to “make people feel welcome” enough to come through the doors and provide the counseling that makes them want to return.
“Many people do not have a good experience with the mental health system,” he points out. “We can never be the wrong door” they enter when seeking help.
Right now Family Counseling Service is reaching deep into the community, Andrade and Ward tell me, but can always do better because the need for resources will only grow with the current mental health crisis communities are facing.
Ward offered a sober assessment for children and adolescents whom he describes as “the anxious generation” still struggling from the effects of COVID-19 and the impact technology and internet platforms have on their lives.
“Organizations like us are going to become more necessary just to get these children functional,” he says, adding that social and political uncertainty has also left adults “worried and lacking confidence in the world around them.”
That’s why leaving behind all that he helped build has been an emotional letting-go for Ward, who will stay on temporarily as senior advisor and lead special projects while also maintaining and building his private counseling business.
“Growth for the sake of growth is never a good thing,” he says. “This organization needs Jason’s skill set now more than it needs mine … it is time to go.”