Progress-Index 2023 Newsmaker: James House director has personal experience with mission
PRINCE GEORGE – When Chana Amaro goes to work every day, she feels a special kinship with the clients her organization serves.
She has been there.
Amaro is director of The James House, a local nonprofit that works with the victims of sexual and domestic abuse. And while her current job puts her more into an administrative rather than counseling role, her background aligns perfectly with the group’s mission.
Amaro is a victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence. She also has a degree in criminal justice, which means she began her career dealing more with the perpetrators than the victims.
It is an irony not lost on the 63-year-old Amaro.
“It’s an odd fit to be doing what I am now,” she said. “I started out with an education in criminal justice, and now I am providing victims with assistance.”
That is an association that started 22 years ago when The James House was still in Hopewell. After becoming familiar with what the organization was doing, she went to work for it. At first, she was doing victim outreach, working directly with the victims and leading the volunteers.
A year later, she was chosen to lead The James House.
“The program had hit some rough spots when I took over,” she recalled. “And when I took over, I kind of steamrolled everything.”
When Amaro began that steamrolling, The James House had just three part-time employees. Today, its staff – and its reach – is much larger.
TJH’s service area is the Tri-City area, southeastern Chesterfield County, and Sussex and Surry counties. Its headquarters relocated from Hopewell to Prince George, and it opened two offices in Surry and Waverly.
Amaro does not like to think of herself as being “in charge” of TJH. She said she prefers to lead by example, and she is always quick to pass the credit for the organization’s success to the staff and volunteers, all of whom she hired.
“When I went for my interview, we sat down at the kitchen table and talked for almost four hours,” said Jane Clayborne, TJH’s director of community relations. “It was like we’ve been friends for all that time. When I went home and my husband asked me how the interview went, I told him I did not feel like I had been interviewed.
That was 18 years ago. Not only is Amaro Clayborne’s boss but also one of her very best friends that extends beyond the office. Clayborne recalled an instance several years ago when her house caught on fire early one morning, and they were standing outside at 2:15 a.m. watching fire crews battle the blaze.
“Chana was the first person I called,” Clayborne remembered. “I woke her up and she answered the call, and she was the first person that came to us.
“She’s a wonderful friend.”
Her assistant director, Deloris Jefferson, sees Amaro not just as a mentor but also a mom figure.
“Her daughter and I are the same age, so I guess she is kind of like my mama,” Jefferson said. When Amaro asks Jefferson about her husband and family, Jefferson said, “Chana genuinely cares.”
Amaro returns that love ... not just to her work family but also for the people The James House supports. Again, it comes back to the rough conditions in which she was raised.
As a victim, she recalled first being angry at the domestic violence justice system, feeling as if it had let her down and made it feel like she had deserved everything that happened to her.
“I took responsibility for my abuse, but then I eventually learned what happened was not my fault,” Amaro said. “It’s not something I did. It was something that happened to me.”
She said she has tried to drive home that point through the counseling and advocacy The James House offered – it’s not the victim’s fault.
“I’m a business manager, a fund raiser, someone with vision,” she said. “And now and again, I get to work directly with the clients.”
That has not happened much in the last year or so, but she said she often is called upon to offer advice to staffers about setting up a counseling plan.
“That’s what I love about this job. No two days are alike,” Amaro said, adding that when she is approached for assistance, it’s usually “the really bizarre ones.”
The work also keeps Amaro making peace with her past.
“I’m a childhood abuse survivor,” she said, “and I was really mad at that. I wanted to see somebody fry.”
That drove her into choosing a career in criminal justice and then evolving into victim advocacy. Deep down, though, she admitted that old habits can bubble to the surface.
“Sometimes,” she said, somewhat wryly, “I’d still like to see someone fry.”
Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: 2023 Newsmaker Chana Amaro: James House director has personal experience with mission
