Norbert White is a man of passion and vision. The passion is based on the memory of a college roommate who died of HIV/AIDS. The vision is based on decades spent as an executive in the telecommunications business in nine cities.
White is president and chief executive officer of Samaritan House, which opened in 1993 as the result of Fort Worth schoolteacher Richard Kurtz" challenges to the city and church leaders to develop a place where people stricken with HIV/AIDS could go to live out their remaining days. But a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is no longer the death sentence it once was, and Samaritan House is today a far different and more important resource than it was at its beginning.
White's vision is of a Samaritan House that is financially secure and less dependent on government funding than it is today and of an agency that extends its reach throughout Fort Worth by forming alliances with other organizations with similar missions.
White was living in Northeast Tarrant County and working for Verizon when he took a buyout and joined Executives in Action. He put Samaritan House on his wish list and got the assignment. A few months later, he was invited to join the board and later became the board chair. When longtime CEO Steve Dutton retired, he was selected as the organization's leader.
He's also president and chief executive officer of the Mental Health Housing Development Corp., which operates Hanratty Place and Pennsylvania Place apartments nearby. "They were originally chartered to support individuals impacted by mental health issues. We are expanding our impact by supporting them. There are 310 units of housing that are now available to the homeless, individuals impacted by HIV and AIDS and mental health issues," he said. "It's an expansion of our mission."
Together with the single-person residences at Samaritan House and the families in The Villages at Samaritan House, White has responsibility for about 700 men, women and children who live under those roofs.
It began at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire with a gay roommate named Albert Knight who later died of HIV/AIDS. "I think of it as an age of ignorance," White says now. "So much was not understood. His family chose to ostracize him because they weren't sure how to deal with it. … I probably do much of what I do here in honor of Albert Knight."
His focus is that of the corporate executive he was - bottom-line effectiveness and quality.
"I want to build relationships with all of the organizations in Fort Worth because if there are others who have a core competency and they can do something more cost effectively than I can, or more efficiently than I can, I want to make use of them," White said. "It doesn't have to be invented here."
Examples are collaborative efforts with Catholic Charities and the University of North Texas Health Science Center to address infant mortality in Fort Worth and the Genesis program that places people into apartments and homes off of Samaritan House and Mental Health Housing Development Corp. premises.
"To lots of people, we are an unknown; to others, we are misunderstood because they think of us in the past as opposed to what we do today; and so our capabilities and promise are not known by some people," he said.
He wants to grow Samaritan House's contribution to Fort Worth through alliances with other agencies not for the glory of Samaritan House but to share needed services and "be a better community partner producing more."
