Terry Hernandez announces retirement from Chrysalis Foundation after 28 years

When Terry Hernandez arrived for her first day as executive director of Chrysalis Foundation, she thought she had shown up to the wrong location.

“There was a little office they’d rented, and there was a table and a telephone, and I thought I was in the wrong place,” she said. “I called the board president at the time and said, ‘I think I’m in the wrong place.’ She verified where I was, and then she said, ‘No, that’s why we hired you.’”

After 28 years at the helm of the Chrysalis Foundation, a nonprofit providing women and girls in Des Moines with after-school opportunities and grant funding, Hernandez has decided to step back. She announced her retirement on Thursday, July 9. 

“I started in ‘97 and I was the first staff person they hired,” Hernandez said. “So I came on board never expecting to stay this long anywhere, and I can’t believe it’s been as long as it’s been, but it’s been really a great ride and a lot of fun.” 

Caring for girls’ futures

Hernandez learned about the Chrysalis Foundation in her search to create a program like the one she’d go on to run with the foundation. 

While working for the YMCA of Greater Des Moines, she noticed young girls would hang around the Y in search of boys. She was hoping to start an after-school program to give them something else to focus on.

“I thought if we can give them something constructive to do, that’ll keep their minds off of everything else that they’re thinking,” Hernandez said. 

She submitted a grant request to the Chrysalis Foundation. At that time, the organization was primarily a grant-making entity. Founder Louise Noun had been searching for someone in Iowa to start a foundation to benefit women and girls. She, alongside state Sen. Elaine Szymoniak and attorney Barbara Barrett, decided to launch it themselves. 

Around the time Hernandez joined the foundation, they had received a donation to start an after-school program like the one she had envisioned for the YMCA. 

“We put together some components of what an after-school program for girls in middle school could be,” Hernandez said. “We awarded eight schools with money to start this program. We put together a curriculum around self-esteem, positive thinking, hope for the future, planning for them to stay in school and graduate and then look at careers and maybe post-secondary education.” 

Noun thought Chrysalis would facilitate the program for a few years and the schools would pick it up and secure funding. Twenty-eight years later, the program is in 30 schools in Polk, Warren and Dallas counties, serves grades 5 through 8 and trains high school girls to be mentors to younger girls in the program. 

“We evaluate every year, and we’ve learned that after-school programming keeps girls in school, gives them more hope, helps them know that adults will support them and helps them plan for the future,” Hernandez said. 

Opening doors

Standing on the other side of 28 years of working for a nonprofit that serves girls and women, Hernandez believes she’s helped provide opportunities she wishes she had when she was younger. 

“We made sure that the graduates of our programs had opportunities to meet women who were doing what they wanted to be doing, and that I think is the most exciting because I always wanted to be a doctor but there weren’t women doctors back then, so if I had seen a woman as a doctor and had a chance to talk to her, I might have followed that path and realized that it could happen,” Hernandez said. 

Hernandez said the after-school program helps young girls make better choices, hoping to rectify the issues they address in their grant funding before they develop. 

“The population of those women didn’t have great opportunities, or they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or the parents weren’t there,” Hernandez said. 

During her Chrysalis tenure, Hernandez was able to impact the greater Des Moines community as well. She helped pull together leaders from different women’s organizations to see how they could collectively support one another and their work. The group became the Women’s Alliance, which still meets regularly to share what’s going on in their community, partner to serve the organizations’ needs and skill build on various nonprofit needs. 

This group resulted in a community-wide study around the main issues facing girls and women. The resulting report was shared with community leaders in hopes they could strategically address these issues. 

“To my chagrin, these are the same issues today that were issues then,” Hernandez said. “The greatest barriers for women were affordable childcare, transportation, safety and affordable housing. It made me think, ‘Holy cow, somebody’s got to give these girls better options.’” 

She also worked with a collective of women’s organizations, the Iowa Women’s Leadership Project, to produce the “She Matters: The Status of Women and Girls in Iowa” report in 2012. The report provided relevant data on issues affecting women’s and girls’ lives. Hernandez called that report her “baby.” 

“This is another thing I’m really proud of, because it just became such a useful piece, and the term ‘she matters’ has been, for me, sort of emphasizing, ‘pay attention,’” she said. 

Chrysalis Foundation has begun the search for Hernandez’s replacement, and she plans to stay on through the transition. She’d also like to stay through the foundation’s fall fundraising event, Chrysalis Inspired. 

She hopes to continue to help Chrysalis with strategic planning training that she’s provided for other nonprofits. Above all, she hopes to continue to advocate for girls and women in whatever form that takes. 

“I want people just to care about each other,” Hernandez said. “It sounds a little hokey, but I’ve seen what happens when you ignore people or you treat them badly. When I speak to different groups, I say, ‘Please recognize that kids are always watching you.’ Kindness goes a long way.”