News Releases

Executives Elected to Terms on LSA Board

May 6, 2009 (Baltimore, MD) - Three executives were elected to the national Board of Lutheran Services in America, the Baltimore-based alliance of two Lutheran denominations and their 300 social ministry organizations, during its annual meeting April 30 in Washington, DC.

Three Board members were elected for three-year terms beginning July 1, 2009:

Barbara Dröher Kline is President and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of Northern California. She begins her second term on the LSA Board. Previously Dröher Kline worked at: Kairos Home for runaway girls in East Oakland; Alameda County Social Services; and Lutheran Social Services of Northern California, where she started the Turning Point Women’s Center in San Jose, CA. She is the board chair for Miracles of Faith, an ELCA mission-start in Oakland, California.

Bill Hanawalt is the Executive Director of Peace Community Center in Tacoma, Washington, a community-based nonprofit vision and ministry of Peace Lutheran Church. He began his work at Peace Community Center as the volunteer Executive Director after college. Today the Center, a social ministry of the ELCA, serves more than 500 children and youth, and 500 adults each year. Over the last three years the Center has supported 42 low-income and or minority students to graduate high school, of which 36 are currently enrolled in college as freshmen, sophomores, or juniors. These students have garnered over one million dollars in scholarships to support their goal of a college education.

Sam Sipes is President and CEO Lutheran Services Florida (LSF). Prior to joining LSF, he served in various roles with Lutheran Social Services of the South (LSS), including President and COO. Before joining LSS, Sipes was employed as a program director at the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, an administrator of an assisted living facility and a unit director at a residential treatment center. He has served on numerous boards, including; The Texas Society of Clinical Social Work, The Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services, The Council on Accreditation, The Texas Mezzanine Fund, The Lutheran Foundation of the Southwest and The Florida Coalition for Children.

Lutheran Services in America creates opportunities with people in thousands of communities throughout the United States and the Caribbean as an alliance of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, and their nearly 300 health and human service organizations. Working neighbor to neighbor through services in health care, aging and disability supports, community development, housing, and child and family strengthening, these organizations together touch the lives of one in 50 Americans each year.

###