This post was adapted from our email newsletter.
Whether residing in ‘Bama, NOLA or OKC, Tiffany Kea always longed to return to her native Chester. Now she is living and working in her home city.
Tiffany is Chester Eastside’s new Operations Manager, a job that defines “jack of all trades.” She’s the voice answering the phone, person involved a myriad of tasks and cheerleader for all things CEI. “I am blessed to be working here – to be in a job that makes a difference,” she said. “For the first time in my life I feel like I have a career.”
The valedictorian of her high school class at Concord Christian Academy in Wilmington, Tiffany met her future husband, Kevin, when both participated in Upward Bound at Swarthmore College, which provides fundamental support to students as they prepare for college entrance. She subsequently attended Widener University.
Tiffany traded the classroom for the workroom, first as an office manager for Paul-Bryant Trucking, then as a hospice team coordinator with Vitas Healthcare. The office served nearly 1,000 patients and she aligned their needs with caregivers’ support.
Both jobs, combined with the couple raising three boys (Keerson, Nicholas and Jason), prepared Tiffany to be the activities and parents support coordinator at the former Village Charter School. She organized field trips and in-school festivities like Spirit Week for the nearly 500 students grades pre-K-12 and operated as the liaison between faculty and moms and dads.
Her reach extended outside the campus, as she coordinated with the Philadelphia office of IBM to donate refurbished computers to the school. Ensuring each family had a workable desktop benefitted the children and their parents.
“They were a help to everyone in the house,” said Tiffany. “The kids could do their homework and the adults could work on their word and Excel skills and even search for jobs.”
Kevin’s position as a supervisor with the post office moved the family from city to city, where Tiffany applied her talents in volunteer capacities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she provided toiletries for displaced New Orleans residents living under bridges. The devastation reached east to Gadsden, Alabama, where she served as a PTO president, expanding her interaction far beyond the typical parent-teacher relationship. She facilitated returning families to their homes, furnishing 52 residences with chairs, tables, desks, beds and other necessities.
“I just can’t sit around and do nothing,” she said. “Everyone has a story – I know I’ve been up and down – and I wanted to give as much as I could.”
Each city, each job, offered insight into life at CEI. As operations manager, Tiffany is responsible for overseeing the food pantry and procedures of the Out of School Time and Camp Phoenix programs, looking to maximize efficiencies while increasing the number of community participants.
The Chester of today is not the one she remembers (“coming home and seeing the changes broke my heart”), yet the eternal optimist within her sees opportunity at CEI and beyond its walls.
“The people of this city helped to raise me – I know every street, every cut-through,” said Tiffany. “There are positive people everywhere trying to make a change.”
Special thanks to Leslie Krowchenko for conducting and writing this interview.