Navarra Williams selected to lead San Antonio’s largest homeless ministry
SAMMinistries‘ board of directors approved a new president and CEO of the organization to replace the retiring Bob Martindale.
After conducting a national search, the board voted to select Navarra R. Williams, the president of Time Warner Cable San Antonio from 1991 to 2002, to lead one of the city’s largest providers of services to the homeless.
Williams will officially start his first day on Wednesday, Aug. 1. He is currently area vice president for Comcast Cable in the Silicon Valley — a territory which includes 400,000 customers in San Jose, Monterey and Santa Cruz, Calif.
When Williams last worked in San Antonio, he served as vice chairman and later chairman of the Greater Kelly Development Authority from 1996 to 2000. From 2001 to 2003, he was acting president of the board for the David Robinson’s Carver Academy.
Ann Hutchinson Meyers, board chairwoman of SAMMinistries, says the entire organization is excited to have Williams on their team.
“He brings amazing talents to the organization as well as a heart for the homeless and a strong faith that believes in giving back to the community,” Meyers says.
“We provide services to the least, the last and lost of San Antonio, and we feel blessed to have Navarra leading the ministry into our next quarter century,” she says.
SAMMinistries is in a transition period of the organization’s nearly 25 years in San Antonio. The organization will serve as the flagship nonprofit emergency services provider for the new Haven for Hope campus. In addition, SAMMinistries will continue to place homeless individuals in transitional and permanent housing.
Construction has begun on Haven for Home, a 200,000 square foot facility on the city’s West Side that will provide a range of social services for homeless individuals from medical and dental care to treatment for substance abuse. The center also will provide job training, education, legal support and identification assistance to individuals.
An estimated 25,000 people in San Antonio are homeless. Of those, 40 percent are families with children, while a significant number of others suffer from either mental illness or substance abuse problems.
SAMMimistries, San Antonio, Homelessness, Navarra R. Williams
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