After a very thorough recruitment process, we are pleased to announce that we have selected Michelle Douglas as UCP’s next Community Services Director. This vacancy was created last month, when the current Community Services Director, Ann Coffey, was selected to be UCP’s future Executive Director.

As is typical at UCP when hiring upper-level management, both employees and the people we support played a significant role in the hiring process. Everyone was invited to share what they thought was important for the position before recruiting began, and a cross-department group of employees and people we support participated in panel interviews and then shared their thoughts about the applicants.

Michelle Douglas was one of several phenomenal internal applicants. Michelle has been UCP’s Community Services Supports Manager for almost a year. As CSSM, Michelle has been a member of the Community Services management team. She has been responsible for supervising UCP’s pool of on-call caregivers, as well as coordinating the department’s record keeping processes, medication administration support, and 24 hour emergency response service.

For those of you who may not know Michelle, she has a bachelor’s degree in Human Communication and is fluent in Spanish. Her professional experience includes teaching, administration, direct support, and management.

As Community Services Director, Michelle will provide leadership for the development of agency policy and supervise all Community Services managers. She will create the department budget and monitor monthly financial performance, and will lead the department to ensure compliance with federal, state, and county regulations. She will facilitate a collaborative working relationship between UCP constituents, including UCP employees, people we support, families, other service providers, vendors, employers, etc. Michelle will also develop new customer service contracts, ensuring a customer-driven approach, excellent customer service, and quality deliverables.

Please join us in congratulating Michelle on her promotion. We are very excited for the next chapter here at UCP.