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Christy Potts grew up on a farm north of Bismarck. With her roots growing deep in the heartland of North Dakota, she found an even deeper love of working with adults with disabilities after it was modeled for her by her family. Christy has two uncles with developmental disabilities “Time, respect, advocacy, and a high level of care was demonstrated for me by my family, especially by my grandparents who were their biggest champions.” Her personal experience translates into the way Christy advocates for care and respect at the LISTEN Center. When designing the new center on South Washington Street in Grand Forks, every aspect was designed for people with disabilities in mind. The hallways, desks, tables, and bathrooms were designed to help the staff provide the best care for everyone who visits the LISTEN Center.

You have just recently opened a new facility; how does this center differ from previous locations?
Our previous spaces were not accessible or safe for people with disabilities and our staff. The old Drop-In Community Center on North Washington Street was old and outdated. LISTEN had owned that property since 1984, but it’s a split-level building and wasn’t accessible for people with limited mobility. We had many people in our community who loved coming to Drop-In, and many who would have to miss out because they had limited mobility. There were so many opportunities to improve the quality of services and spaces for people with dis- abilities in our new building, that we all worked hard to make it accessible and user-friendly for everyone who chooses our services and everyone who chooses to work for us. We have a dining room now, and we have an actual elevator. We de- signed the building with wider doorways and hallways, lots of natural light, and automatic door openers throughout. We also installed ceiling lifts and hydraulic changing tables in 9 of the bathrooms in the building. We can now support many more people in this building because of the accessibility and wide-open spaces.

What kinds of services does the LISTEN Center offer for adults who live with disabilities?
Everyone who comes to LISTEN during the day decides what they want their schedule to look like and what activities they would like to participate in. Some of which include music therapy, arts and crafts, pet therapy, volunteering for Meals on Wheels, working out at Choice Fitness, movies, cooking classes, ex- ercise classes, and sometimes just taking a quiet moment in one of our sensory rooms. We support people with everything and anything you could think of that would affect someone’s daily life. Giving our direct support staff the freedom and authority to look for ways to improve people’s lives has helped us provide great quality-of-life care for everyone who chooses LISTEN as their residential provider. We can support someone at their family home with these services to provide some relief or a break for their loved ones, or we can support someone at community events or activities during these hours. Our Drop-In Community Center is open to all and provides many low or no-cost activities and events for the community.

What does LISTEN stand for? More importantly, what does LISTEN mean to you?
LISTEN stands for Love Is Sharing The Exceptional Needs. For me, this company means growth, progress, advocacy, and raising the standard for accessible and quality spaces and services for people with disabilities. Professionally for myself, LISTEN has given me a great avenue to show my leadership skills and business knowledge. I’ve had the opportunity to improve so many policies, practices, and procedures at LISTEN that I wouldn’t have had at a larger organization. I really do feel a lot of pride and ownership in our new building and the growth of LISTEN since I started.

What are some goals the LISTEN Center has for future years?
LISTEN’s services and everyone who chooses to work for us. Some of LISTEN’s future goals include expanding residential services with high-quality accessible housing op- tions for people with disabilities. It’s very difficult to find truly accessible affordable housing. So, we want to build partnerships in the community and work to design spaces that are more accessible and user-friendly for people with disabilities.

In what ways can people in the community help the LISTEN Center? Are there volunteer opportunities? Or somewhere they can go to donate?
LISTEN wouldn’t be able to support so many people with disabilities and we certainly wouldn’t be able to help individuals and families in dire need of services. We will always be thankful for donations, and you can certainly do that on our website www.listencenter.org, but the need right now is not for us, it is for all citizens with disabilities in the state because LISTEN can’t support everyone. The best way to help right now is to contact your legislators and encourage them to provide funding for the DD Budget. The Health and Human service funding supports the most vulnerable of us, the most disadvantaged of us, the most under- privileged of us. And when we support all people to have a better quality of life, that ripples up to the rest of us and we see it in our communities, in our workplaces, and in our lives.

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BY KEVIN FEE Grand Forks Herald GRAND FORKS 

Christy Potts has worked with many people with disabilities. What keeps her coming back to her job as executive director at the LISTEN Center are stories like this: She was supporting a client, Gerald, who was 62 years old. He was an orphan at birth. Potts made calls and internet searches to try to find his family. Bingo. Letters she sent resulted in a response. “I got a response back and it was Gerald’s sisters. He had three living sisters, and they all came to visit him, and everyone cried. Gerald’s eyes got watery, and you could see the joy on his face during that interaction. His sisters had just lost their other brother and fate had sent them Gerald. I get emotional thinking about the experience.” Potts runs LISTEN, which provides homeand community-based services. It is Medicaidfunded through the state of North Dakota, providing residential support for people living in their own apartments or homes, family support services for children and adults still living with their families and day services for adults. The Herald sat down with Potts to discuss her organization’s mission and her leadership role.

Q: What got you into this business? Tell us how it started.

A: I grew up on a farm north of Bismarck and a mile down the road from my grandparents. I have two uncles with developmental disabilities who were a big part of my life. Growing up they were always at my grandparents’ house, along with my other aunts, uncles, cousins, so it was a very familiar experience for me being around my uncles, Donny and Doug. They had a different way of moving through the world than my other family members. During this time, respect, advocacy and a high level of care was demonstrated for me by my family, especially from my grandparents who were their biggest champions. This experience had a great impact on me and helped form how I interact with, not only people with disabilities, but with everyone. In 2007, my husband accepted a job at Polar Communications in Park River, so that moved us to this area of the state. At that time, I decided to finish my undergraduate degree in business management and international business by taking online classes. When we first moved, I worked at Marvin Windows in Grafton. But in August 2008, my father was diagnosed with brain cancer, so I was fortunate to be able to move back to Bismarck to spend time with him. He passed in February 2009 at 47 years old. He was the one who encouraged me to go into business and management. He would tell me, “You get a degree in business, and you can work just about anywhere.” I was 24 at the time and he passed 11 days before my husband and I were married, so that was a really hard time in my life. I pressed on, continuing my online classes and I started working directly with people with disabilities in July 2009 after I had moved back to Grafton. I had never worked with people with disabilities as a job before, but it felt comfortable immediately.

Q: Are there any hurdles or stereotypes that you had to overcome due to gender?

A: I have definitely run into many hurdles and stereotypes as a woman. One of the biggest ones being that what I say holds less value than what a male says at times. I’ve had situations where I thank male colleagues for what they have said during meetings, and their response is, “I said exactly what you said.” And I say, “I know, but thank you for saying it, too.” There’s been other situations where individuals come into meetings with me or want me to conduct business in a certain way, so they’ll try to direct me in our business dealings together because, I think, they think I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll navigate those situations by asking a lot of questions and even though I know what will be best for LISTEN or I know what the legality of a situation is, if they start to be really persistent with me, I’ll tell them that I just don’t know enough about the situation to make a decision and I need to contact our attorney or another professional and get back to them. Usually when I say attorney, people back off.

Q: What has been your biggest joy as a woman business leader?

A: My biggest joy is the opportunity to build up other people’s confidence in their jobs and lives. I have a great responsibility to the staff who choose to work for LISTEN and part of that responsibility is to show them respect and love and opportunities for growth. Whatever they want for themselves, that’s what I want for them. I want to lead them with respect andfairness so that they can lead and support people with disabilities with respect and fairness. That’s another great joy, having an interaction with an employee where you were able to show a lot of grace and learning and then seeing that employee reframe their interactions with others to show the same care.

Q: What advice would you give to young women who want to become executives or entrepreneurs?

A: Keep your eye out for the things that look exciting – and also a little scary – and then find a way to do them. I keep finding that the more I reach for opportunities that feel too big or too far out of my comfort zone, the more I look back and say ‘I’m really glad I did that.’

Q: Are there any hurdles or stereotypes that you had to overcome due to gender?

A: I don’t know that I would say obstacles related to gender specifically – at least not that I’ve felt. I think in this business – or maybe in any business – having to get over your Q: Do you have advice for young women who want to become executives or entrepreneurs? A: My advice is to be open to reframing the way you think about things and be flexible in the way you reach your goals. Things will never work out exactly the way you plan, but sometimes we get caught up in the details and something happens that makes us think it won’t work. But, if you are persistent, most of the time you can make something work. Also, being very forwardthinking will help you to reach your goals.

Q: As for being a business leader: Knowing what you know now, would you do things the exact same way? If so, why? And if not, what would you change?

A: I would change the way I did some things because every day is an opportunity to learn and grow. I spent a lot of time in my 20s giving people the benefit of the doubt and what that looked like was that I didn’t document interactions or agreements. One thing I would have changed is to follow up conversations with an email. I’ve always figured out a way to get things done, but by doing that, I would have been able to make progress faster earlier in my career. When we’re young, we might feel like we need to be really nice to our colleagues and leaders and trust them to follow through on things or pass information on, but you’re not being unkind by following up with an email, so it’s documented. You are more efficient at your job when you do that. You can then forward that email and add on to it for the next interaction. Shutterstock own mental hurdle is a challenge. There’s always this fear of failure, rejection or people just not liking you, and that’s OK. Getting to a point where you feel good about what you’re doing and the way you’re doing it, and knowing that the right people are going to gravitate toward that is important.

Q: As for being a business leader: Knowing what you know now, would you do things the exact same way? If so, why? And if not, what would you change?

A: I think all I would have changed, knowing what I know now, is that I should have done it sooner. I really enjoy getting to work one on- one with people, and do work that’s catered to them. It feels impactful and can make a difference in the course of their lives.

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