OUR TEAM
Courtney Banks-Tatum
Courtney Banks-Tatum is a Grand Rapids native who is passionate about serving young adults in the community. She currently serves as the Employer Relations Manager for the Career Center at Calvin University. In this role, she cultivates relationships with employers to secure job and internship opportunities for students. She also oversees the student employment program on campus ensuring students are career ready before graduating.
In addition to serving young adults, Courtney also serves youth in the community by sitting on the board for William C. Abney Academy and coaching basketball at East Kentwood High School.
Courtney has a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Aquinas College and two master’s degrees (in Public Administration and Health Administration) from Grand Valley State University.
Jessica Carter
Jessica Carter, MEd is a graduate of Grand Valley State University 2010 (BS Political Science, minor in Criminal Justice) and 2014 (Master if Education, emphasis in early childhood education). Jessica has worked with children from preschool to high school in both the education and child welfare field for the past 10 years. Jessica is currently a CPS investigator with the state of Michigan. Jessica is passionate about child welfare and helping children reach their full potential. Jessica is the 3rd child of 5 and is a first generational college graduate. Jessica enjoys board games and reading.
Pete Barrows
Pete, an ordained minister in the Church of Spiritual Humanism who describes himself politically as a hip-hop socialist, is something of a renaissance man who wears a variety of hats. Each helps represent an eclectic collection of experiences accumulated along a meandering journey of lived interdisciplinary.
He has coached in a variety of capacities, including adaptive sports for students with disabilities and high school football, basketball, and track and field. He has experience as a mentor, teacher, counselor, paraprofessional, life enrichment coordinator, and most recently, as a youth development specialist. He has worked with students with disabilities, youth in foster care, refugee families, hearing impaired individuals, and the elderly. As a graduate student in the American Culture and Ethnic Studies program at Bowling Green State University, he earned keep as both a teacher and graduate assistant, instructing classes in the humanities and maintaining a caseload of at-risk students to support, enhance, and guide their educational experience. He had a career as a backpack (sports) journalist himself, writing stories, publishing columns, writing freelance, editing copy, coordinating a reporting staff, recording podcasts, hosting and guesting on radio shows, and interning at The Nation as equal parts activist, academic, and journalist.
Academically, he has multiple degrees and certifications in the humanities and has incorporated a multitude of disciplines into his studies including linguistics, writing, rhetoric, research, communication, journalism, broadcasting, critical media, emerging media, education, design thinking, ambidextrous thinking, divergent thinking, critical theory, culture studies, ethnic studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, human anthropology, the science of well-being, and trauma responsive care. This is representative of his intellectual ethos of weaving together threads of knowledge from all over the world of historical cultural thought into a quilt to tell a more meaningful story than the threads ever could alone.
Pete is a storyteller who believes in actions that make our lives and world more meaningfully livable.
Charmel Mack
Charmel Mack is a Director of Information Technology with over 30 years of experience in the retail space. She has a bachelor’s degree in Writing from Grand Valley State University. She is a focused servant leader determined to participate in the development and growth of individuals. She is a product of a family of educators, computer scientists, and sports fanatics all of which molded her strong work ethic. She believes in the power of the possible and providing guidance to those in need. Strong, healthy communities are composed of people with those same qualities. Charmel enjoys all genres of music and film, sharing concepts of financial literacy, reading, traveling, hanging out with family, and sporting events.
George Banks Jr
George Banks Jr is the founder and CEO of Shifting Patterns Supportive Housing. George is deeply invested in ensuring that young men in the community not only thrive but become the best version of themselves. He has over 14 years of experience supervising in youth treatment facilities and independent living program settings, specializing in staff development, team building, relationship establishing, program curation and management. He also has 10 years of experience developing and implementing independent living structure and has hatched SPSH drawing from these extensive first-hand experiences.
George is an expert in multiple crisis intervention models -- Love and Logic; Handle with Care; Crisis Prevention Intervention; and Collaborative Problem Solving – and has utilized elements of these models to inform his process. George is well-versed in matters regarding: HIPAA, ICWA, Suicide prevention, self-harm, the creation and maintenance of a therapeutic milieu, self-care, poverty prevention, cultural competency, and trauma responsive care. He has certifications in first aide, CPR, blood borne pathogens, workplace safety, and credits from MSU in leadership and staff retention trainings.
Those who have worked with George understand his unique and unmistakable capacity to change the energy of any room he enters – he strolls in with a mindful calm in his signature Timberland boots. It can be a transformative experience to work with George and it is this ability, above others, that enables George to be a change-maker, helping those he comes into contact with want to shift their patterns.
Ken Smith
Ken Smith is a proven, successful Operations Manager with over 30 years of leadership experience. His career has been focused in the Medical, Food, and the Recreation Products industries, but his passion is in being a coach and leader who assists in the development of others as a way of achieving goals. Ken continues to learn and teach in the areas of Quality, Safety, Integrity, and Ownership. He asks a lot of himself and encourages the best from others.
Ken attended DeVry Institute of Technical Business Operations and RCC in Riverside CA. He holds certificates from the School of Health Care and Science, an AMA Certificate for Physical Inventory & Cycle Counting, the Michigan State Police Certificate for Explosive Recognition & Terrorism Awareness and has completed the Michigan State Police Train the Trainer program for Explosive Recognition & Terrorism Awareness.
Ken is a Believer and belongs to Tabernacle Community Church. He Is family oriented and is blessed to have a large circle of family and friends to spend time with. He loves to travel and has been fortunate to spend time around the U.S. and abroad. Most recently he has had the opportunity to travel to Haiti with his son installing and repairing wells with Turning Point Ministries. Ken has recently ventured into the real estate. He enjoys rehabbing projects and working with his hands.
Rachel Kunnath
Rachel Kunnath has over 15 years of experience in program development, program management, and leadership in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Rachel earned a Bachelor of Social Work degree in 2004 from Grand Valley State University and a Master of Social Work degree from Grand Valley State University in 2008. Rachel currently oversees all Senior Services programming in the Community Action Department at the County of Kent. Rachel previously served as a Program Manager overseeing an adolescent residential treatment program, where youth in foster care received long-term trauma treatment. Rachel also served as Program Director at a nonprofit workforce development collaborative, where she managed multiple programs aimed at helping employees retain employment, enhance their skills, and advance into higher wage positions. Rachel also has experience facilitating support groups for runaway and homeless youth, victims of domestic violence, and individuals managing anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and trichotillomania. Rachel lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and two children.
