Our 2026 Goals: Building a Strong, Compassionate Future at St. Mary’s Home

Serving as the CEO of St. Mary’s Home is truly my dream job. People sometimes overlook the fact that nonprofits are businesses. We operate with goals, objectives, budgets, and benchmarks just as any other business does.

What makes this my dream job is that we are fortunate enough to run our business in support of the most magnificent group of children and young adults around, providing them with a good life.

• The Home operates on a budget of $32,797,288. As you know, healthcare costs are extremely high, and we care for medically fragile children and young adults.
• The budget is primarily funded by tightly controlled governmentally regulated Medicaid with a cap that limits funding per person per day, requiring that we adhere to strict budgetary standards.
• We have a fundraising goal of $1.2M to cover costs that are not reimbursed by Medicaid or other insurance.
• We track the number of individuals we care for in our residential space in Norfolk as well as the new group homes in Virginia Beach. In 2026, we expect to provide medical, therapeutic, and recreational care for at least 108 individuals.
• The Home will provide full-time employment to approximately 350 individuals.
• Mary’s will provide clinical experience and state certified training to more than 1000 healthcare workers who serve individuals with disabilities from across the Commonwealth resulting in a profound impact on this underserved community far beyond our walls.

Each person cared for at St. Mary’s has an Individualized Support Plan (ISP) with goals for that person that will include things like eating by mouth, moving their wheelchair independently, communicating via eye gaze. Staff track progress toward these active treatment goals daily and refresh them quarterly.

The Community Engagement Team take residents on field trips that are determined by what those individuals like to do, with specific goals regarding the number of trip, what skills they will be working on, what their interests are and who they want to spend their time with.

Speech therapy and occupational therapy bring groups of kids together to work on group dining to learn communication and interaction while working on building core muscles and fine motor skills with specific communication and development goals for each person.

Physical therapy incorporates play into therapy sessions because we know that participation and fun are key ingredients to effective and enjoyable therapy sessions.

From direct support professionals providing one on one care, to laundry and environmental services keeping our spaces neat, therapies managing specialized care, and the CFO tracking that budget, each person in this building knows who is really running the show – the people we care for.

The most important goal, our business, is to support them, and for each of our dream jobs, we could not be more grateful. Would you consider how you can support this work today?

Chief Executive Officer, St. Mary’s Home

Shannon holds a master’s degree in business administration and health care administration from the University of Phoenix as well as a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in psychology from the University of Guam. Shannon began her career with St. Mary’s Home in 2011 and has over 12 years of experience working with individuals with disabilities.