Where you're meant to be.
Performance Improvement Specialist | Memphis
Degrees: BS in psychology, MS in community agency counseling
School/s: Freed-Hardeman University & University of Memphis
Hometown: Toledo, Ohio
Hobbies: Reading, running, taking my dogs to the park
Pets: Kobe & Suri, two pugs
Favorite book: The Last Lecture
Personal goal: To travel to Europe with some friends.
You may not know about Drew: My senior year of high school I went a half of a day to a community college to start accruing college credit hours.
Fact: I like to have everything on my desk in its place.
Pet peeve: It can be challenging for me to work with people who cannot multitask.
Drew Miller started out working at Youth Villages as an intern at our Dogwood Campus in 2002. Sister Barbara Spencer, Youth Villages internship manager, set out to find him a full-time job in Clinical Services to match his interests and skills after the internship ended.
Since then, he has worked as placement specialist, clinical services liaison, clinical services specialist and eventually transferred to our Performance Improvement department.
“I think one of the biggest challenges I faced in my first year was learning about all of our various programs – including funding sources/regulations – and how they connected and worked together to achieve our goal of helping our clients live successfully with their families,” he says. “I overcame this challenge by just being patient and taking part in any opportunity that would allow me to be exposed to our programs so that I could learn more about them.”
In his current job as performance improvement specialist, Drew typically spends much time in a day reviewing regulatory information and protocols to ensure that the most updated information is passed on to leadership staff of the many programs Youth Villages provides.
“I enjoy getting to work with all of our programs in all the states where we have offices,” Drew says. “This provides me the chance to work with a group of wonderful leaders and team players.”
The Youth Villages Tuition Reimbursement program helped Drew get his master’s degree, and he is currently participating in the program to obtain licensure.
But he finds most rewarding that children really are helped by the work Youth Villages employees do.
“I saw a young child who will probably not live past his teen years due to a genetic disorder be matched with a loving foster family who will care for him for as long as he lives,” Drew says. “When this client came to our care, his mother could not care for his needs and he had no social or self-help skills. Now he is part of a loving family, follows directions and recently learned to feed himself. Also, because his current family follows his strict diet his lifespan has most likely increased. It feels good knowing that my job duties have permitted this child the chance to be part of a loving and caring family, which has improved his quality of life.”