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Twenty-five years ago,
when Doni Miller was considering the opportunity she had to
take over the troubled Cordelia Martin Health Center, she
received some advice from an acquaintance, a prominent
Toledoan who was all too familiar with such non-profit
agencies in general and the Cordelia Martin in particular.
“Don’t do it,” he advised
her. The financial troubles are too vast to overcome, he
told her, the staff will put obstacles in your way, you will
never make a go of it.
She decided not to follow
his well-intentioned advice.
And she made a go of it.
In fact, she didn’t just
make a go of it, she knocked it out of the park.
Over the next 25 years,
she nurtured the ailing Cordelia Martin Center back to
health and greatly expanded its services.
“When I came to the
Neighborhood Health Association,” she recalled several years
ago in an interview with The Truth, “we faced a number of
problems including the risk of closing. The IRS was poised
to padlock our doors the very day I started. Had it not been
for Mercy Hospital, who provided $15,000 in emergency
funding, we would probably not exist today.”
After that very
frightening beginning, Miller stabilized NHA’s financial
situation and began adding facilities to the operation. The
expansion culminated in Nexus, a $12 million, 43,000 square
foot health care facility, which opened in October 2016. NHA
now operates 14 facilities, with a staff of several hundred
while servicing as many as 45,000 residents annually.
In her spare time, Miller
has been involved with a host of activities including
hosting her own television program, Bridges, since
January 2006, along with membership in numerous political
and social activist groups.
It may not be possible to
accurately total all of Miller’s recognitions and awards,
from local, state and national groups but it is entirely
possible that she may be the single most honored individual
in the state of Ohio – hard to imagine how anyone else has
been so honored over the past two and a half decades.
At her 25th
recognition part last Saturday, Miller received several more
recognitions. U.S. Representative Marcy Kaptur brought one
from Congress, Toledo City Council Members Peter Ujvagi and
Yvonne Harper brought one from City Council and Miller’s NHA
staff presented her with an impressive commemorative plaque.
She was lauded by others
such as Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, NHA’s chief medical
officer Dr. John Uche, MD, NHA’s chief financial officer
Miranda Hoffman and her longtime assistant, Mary Beth
Steele, the organizer of the event.
Miller was born in
Louisville, MS and was raised, for a time, in Philadelphia,
PA. When she was 12, she moved with her parents to Detroit.
She attended the University of Detroit (University of
Detroit-Mercy) and then moved to Toledo where she received
her JD from the University of Toledo College of Law.
Miller started her career
at United Way of Greater Toledo as assistant director of
Allocations in 1982 and two years later became special
assistant to the CEO and director of Program
Development/Legal Assurance at the Toledo Mental Health
Center. In 1990 she became assistant hospital administrator
of the Medical College Hospitals, leaving that position in
1992 to join NHA.
Twenty five years later,
she has taken that agency to previously unimaginable heights
and has provided health care services to countless thousands
of area residents. There have been so many accolades along
the way but, perhaps, not nearly enough. |
