Georgia Miller Mjartan

LITTLE ROCK — Georgia Mjartan’s favorite time of day is early evening, when residents and staff at Our House make their way to the campus common area after dinner.

She loves to watch as teens and grown-ups take to the basketball court for a friendly game and children romp on the playground that was built by 250 volunteers in 2006, financed through a grant Mjartan secured soon after she became Our House’s executive director in 2005.

“It was one of the first things I did. This is not a homeless shelter,” says Mjartan. “It’s a community. You know, what’s a community without a playground?”

Our House, which has space for 80 people, offers separate housing for men and women as well as units where families can stay together for up to two years. Adults are required to have permanent, full-time jobs and are expected to save 75 percent of their earnings.

Mjartan has added programs to help clients improve their lives - free child care and preschool, summer and after-school programs, on-site drug and alcohol programs, and programs to teach job skills, job-search skills, and basic adult education. She also brings in volunteers to help in areas such as financial literacy, parenting and dealing with domestic violence.

“What I have worked more than any one program to create, what we’ve all created - what the people who live here have created, what our staff has created, what our volunteers have created - is a community,” says Mjartan, the only child of well-known Little Rock lawyer Peter Miller and clinical social worker Karen Miller. “I think beyond my immediate family, the thing that really made me turn out to be who I am is that I grew up in a neighborhood and in a community of people who extended beyond my biological family, who acted as a real community - almost like a family.”

Peter Miller says he and his wife intentionally surrounded their daughter with diversity in hopes of instilling asense of social responsibility.

“She worked at Willow Springs water park, and that was a different crowd than she grew up with,” he says. “For a couple of years we developed a business and we sold herbs at the farmers market so she could kind of be out there selling stuff to people.”

The Millers spent some of their holidays with the Zoppe family of theZoppe Family Circus. The Zoppes were clients of Peter Miller.

The community concept the Millers fostered extended into the American School, a private neighborhood school.

“There was a group of parents who came together before I was born and said, you know, we want to create kind of like a charter school, but before charter schools were around. And the really neat thing about that is that there were other people in the neighborhood who knew about this and thought it was a really good idea and had something to give, who didn’t necessarily have kids in school but who said, ‘Well, I could come and teach a class,’” says Mjartan.

Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter neighborhood, where Mjartan grew up, is one of the city’s most diverse, home to the Governor’s Mansion, Mac-Arthur Park, Central High School and many beautifully restored antebellum homes, but also bound by some of the city’s lowest-income, highcrime areas.

“I was really focused on academics and I was a really good student, and I remember a lot of the kids at Governor’s School were talking about where they were going to go to school and I definitely had the opportunity to go to Ivy League schools,” she says. “But again, I was kind of a practical person and it wasn’t about trying to get a good name school on my resume. I wanted to have a really unique experience.”

APPEAL OF A PROGRAM

The Donaghey Scholars program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock appealed to her on many levels.

First, she was adamant about making her own way after high school, and scholars receive scholarship money and a stipend. Beyond that, she liked that the 25 students selected for the program take core courses together, apart from the rest of the student body, and that it would afford an opportunity for study in Europe.

“That was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my young life, especially,” she says. “I went there, and I think because of the kind of school it is if you have real aspirations there are many, many people who support you, and just being part of the Scholars Program was a great kind of boost for me. So I was kind of selected and groomed by some faculty and other staff at UALR to apply for all the kind of big national and international scholarships.”

Retired UALR Chancellor Charles Hathaway says Georgia Mjartan was a rare kind of student.

“She was one of the best students I’ve known. She could do anything you threw at her in the classroom, but she was an extremely well-rounded person who excelled, frankly, at whatever she took on,” Hathaway says. “She’s one of those people who, everything she touches turns to gold.”

Mjartan double-majored in political science and English and was elected president of the Student Government Association in her senior year, when she also served as editor of the school’s literary magazine.

She was a finalist for the Mitchell and the Rhodes scholarships, and she withdrew from the Rhodes process to accept the Mitchell, which sponsors a year of graduate studies in Ireland.

One of the other 24 students in her Donaghey Scholars class was her husband, Dominik Mjartan, who is now vice president at Southern Bancorp. They became a couple as freshmen and dated all through college, marrying on June 1, 2002, about two weeks after graduation. They moved to Ireland as newlyweds, embarking together on graduate studies at the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Dominik Mjartan got a master’s degree in business administration, and when they returned to Arkansas, he got a job in global sales incentive programs with a technology corporation. After earning a master’s degree in political communication and public affairs, she went to work with Ken Hubbell and Associates, managing a contract for a $40 million community development initiative with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Mid South Delta Initiative.

SEARCHING FOR MORE

Working with the Mid South Delta Initiative had been rewarding for Mjartan, but she wanted more.

“I was managing projects and I could do that well, and I could use the skills that I had that made me a successful student to be a successful consultant pretty easily - that was very transferable,” she says. “Meanwhile, I got on the board of directors at Our House because here was an area where I could be more hands-on. In my role with the Kellogg Foundation and with the groups I was working with as a consultant I had this role where I would kind of come into a community, bring a set of expertise, touch in and then leave so the people who were there could do the real work.That was hard because I wanted to do the work.”

She approached her first meeting as an Our House board member in 2004 much like she had faced years of school before that. At 24, she was the youngest board member by about 10 years, and she wanted to be prepared.

“This is very like me, but I had done all my research and I had printed off this 100-page document about homelessness in America and I had read the whole thing and highlighted it so I would sound intelligent when I came to the board meeting,” she says.

And then she sat and listened to a 20-minute report from the auditor.

“I remember just feeling like I wanted to cry because I didn’t even know what page we were on. I left after that board meeting and went home to my mom and said I didn’t know what they were talking about, I felt so stupid. My education didn’t prepare me for this and I don’t know how to read this document and I don’t know if I’m going to be of any use on this board. She said, well just stick with it and it’s not going to be that way every day.”

Mjartan asked for help from those in the know about things she needed to understand to be a successful board member, and she caught on quickly.

“Well, fast forward a year later and I’m running the organization,” she says. “I think by that time I had become very invested in the organization and even though I knew that I didn’t have all the knowledge that I needed to do the job; I also knew that there was this incredible community of volunteers and board members and other people who would support me in stepping into this role.

“Something had to change in me, which is that I couldn’t fake it anymore. I had to really ask for help. And I would say, especially in that first year, I just asked for a lot of help and that was a really, really humbling experience, going around to people and saying we’re in the middle of a $1.4 million capital campaign and the building’s half built and I’m supposed to be watching over these contractors and I don’t know how to read a blueprint.”

Dominik Mjartan tackles the challenges at Our House with her, using his formal business education and his Fortune 500 experience to put together strategies that enable Our House to grow.

“He was in this one very corporate world and I was in this other world and then I started working at Our House and he would come out here every weekend for the first year setting up the computer systems. We have about 60 computers; we have a 40-computer training center down the hill from here and he set all that up,” she says.

“So at that time, we just became a team, and even though I was the executive director at Our House, he was here every weekend and every night we were talking about this. During this time he realized that he wasn’t totally fulfilled doing that kind of just corporate work and so he amazingly found an organization in Arkansas that is the nation’s largest rural development bank.He’s in a role where he’s using that business degree and using that kind of business mind that he has to help change the course of communities in the country.”

Dominik Mjartan says they spend many nights sitting together on the couch in theirriverfront condo working on their identical Dell laptops.

They have played together for years on four soccer teams through the Arkansas Central Soccer Organization.

“She’s fierce,” says her husband. “She kind of catches people by surprise with her speed, given how little she is.”

MORE REVENUE, HELP

Since Mjartan took the helm at Our House, the organization’s revenue has increased by 31 percent, raising the annual budget to $1 million. She has doubled the number of volunteers, helping to recruit 4,424 volunteers each year through a recruitment and management system. And she doubled the number of people Our House could serve, bringing it to 1,020, by expanding programs and building the new shelter.

More volunteers are needed, as are more donations, she says. But she feels like she’s making a difference.

Mjartan’s eyes fill with tears as she talks about a 7-year-old boy who started the summer program wearing blue every day, representing the colors of the street gang he identified with, but who began wearing orange because that was the color of the T-shirt his group in the program wore. His 11-year-old brother announced at the end of the program that he wants to be a judge because he loves the law.

Kids who finished got to keep the digital cameras they learned to use to take pictures for their blogs.

“We touch their lives and we give them an experience that says you’re worth investing in, you’re worth this fancy $150 digital camera,” she says. “You’re worth our time, you’reworth our resources. You have great value. And we believe that you’re going to grow up and be a judge.”

That’s a sentiment she hopes all the residents of Our House come away with.

“Our goal with anyone who stays here is that in the time that they’re here, we want to equip them. We want to give them a taste of what life can be like,” she says. “We try to be that springboard for themand help them move forward and give them that community because much more than a house or a home, I think homeless people need a community. They need people who care about what happens to them, who will give them a job, who will support them as they go through a difficult job, who will ask them how they’re doing, who will care for their kids and who will be proud of them when they’re doing well.”SELF PORTRAIT Georgia Mjartan

DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH July 7, 1980, Little Rock.

IN HIGH SCHOOL I WAS Very serious.

TO MY FANTASY DINNER I WOULD INVITE Ben Franklin, Jon Stewart, Jesus, my husband, Dominik, and my parents, Peter and Karen Miller.

I WANT TO GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS Someone who values all people.

IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING IT WOULD BE People’s attitudes toward one another. If we all looked at each other and saw great value in the people around us - all people - imagine how different our world would be. If we saw as much value in a stranger’s child as in our own child, we would do everything in our power to give that child the best education, the most nurturing environment, all possible opportunities for success.

MY GUILTY PLEASURE IS Sleeping in late on Saturday mornings … even though my husband is already up and working.

THE MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD IS Exploring Ireland and Europe with my husband. We spent our first year of marriage in Ireland together getting our master’s degrees. We bought a car and drove all around Ireland whenever we weren’t studying. Between semesters, we took a road trip across Europe from Ireland by ferry to mainland Europe, along the Autobahn to Slovakia - through the Alps in the middle of the winter. We both have so many wonderful memories from that year. Many of them involve one-lane roads, storybook forests and the smell of peat moss burning in 200-year-old chimneys.

MY PET PEEVE IS Chipped dishes!

IF I HAD TO CHOOSE ANOTHER CAREER FIELD I WOULD Pursue public office - city board, state Legislature, the office of the governor.

THE BOOK I MOST RECENTLY READ AND LIKED WAS Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough.

ON MY NIGHTSTAND I KEEP Right now, I have on my nightstand Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller, my Bible, a journal, a few pens and some notecards reminding me of the attributes I want to work on (patience, humility, discipline … ).

IF I WERE STRANDED ON A DESERTED ISLAND, THE THREE THINGS I WOULD HAVE TO HAVE WOULD BE A thick anthology of poetry, a how-to guide for living in the wilderness and some anti-itch cream.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Joyful.

High Profile, Pages 43 on 10/11/2009

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