Karen Pulfer Focht
Shantelle Leatherwood heads one of the country’s largest, federally qualified Christian community health centers.
Many people in Memphis struggle with health woes prevalent across America today: diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity. But residents who live in underserved communities in Shelby County also face barriers and life stressors that make treating those illnesses far more difficult.
That’s why Christ Community Health Services (CCHS) opened its doors in 1995. Guided by the principles of Christian service, CCHS has long aimed to build relationships in communities that lack access to affordable care. And now at the helm is an African-American woman who understands exactly what this journey looks like, and is
intimately familiar with the organization as well as the challenges of the patients it serves.
Shantelle Leatherwood is the new chief executive officer of Christ Community Health Services. The 44-year-old Memphis native and mother of two accepted the position in February of this year, making her the organization’s first woman and first African-American CEO. Leatherwood now leads one of the city’s largest, federally qualified, Christian community health centers, providing healthcare services to 58,000 patients, the majority of whom are poor and uninsured.
The organization’s clinics — located in communities like Frayser, Binghampton, and Raleigh — represent a beacon of hope for neighborhoods that long have struggled with a shortage of primary-care physicians and healthcare resources. Christ Community operates eight health centers, five dental centers, five full-service pharmacies, and one mobile medical van, which offers acute and primary care to Memphis’ homeless population. The group manages patients with physical as well as emotional issues.
In neighborhoods where poor nutrition, domestic violence, trauma, crime, and poverty dramatically impact health and wellness, the need for CCHS to go beyond treating diagnoses and writing prescriptions isn’t lost on Leatherwood. As a teen growing up in South Memphis, she says she often witnessed the toll poverty extracted on those in her community, and that knowledge has shaped her passion.
“This drives me,” Leatherwood explains. “It causes me to work all night, because I understand our patients’ struggles. You can’t say to someone, ‘You need to eat right and exercise; that’s a challenge for someone who lacks resources.”
One of her goals for CCHS is for the organization to eliminate barriers that keep patients from reaching optimal health. “If we focus on social determinants of health and do social plans to overcome the barriers of poverty, housing, and illiteracy, then eventually, we will have impacted the health of a family,” she says. “Part of that work will need to come from within CCHS, by better coordinating care between departments and by improving the customer experience throughout the agency.”
Leatherwood has spent the last 18 years preparing for the challenges her new job presents. After completing her master’s in health administration at the University of Missouri-Columbia — she was the only student in a class of 20 to choose community health as a concentration — Leatherwood determined that she would direct her energies toward developing wellness clinics in her hometown.
She returned to Memphis in 1999 and started her career as an administrative assistant at CCHS, working for clinical psychologist Alex Galloway, who would become her mentor. It didn’t take long for Galloway to recognize her intelligence and drive. He steadily gave Leatherwood additional responsibilities but was also judicious in his mentoring.
“He kept me away from other people,” Leatherwood recalls. “They’d say, ‘She’s gifted’ but as the boss, he’d say, ‘No, she’s not ready.’ You think you’re ready but that’s just youthful pride, Instead, I learned how to support my boss, how to be a team player, how to have a good attitude. And when you do that, people come to you and ask you to do more.”
It turned out that her thoroughness and attention to detail were skills well-suited to grant writing. Several grant proposals she penned opened doors for CCHS, enabling the organization to procure millions of dollars in federal funding, money that helped the organization develop programs to better serve women and youth.
“I worked so hard I would make myself sick,” says Leatherwood. “But those proposals were funded.” Her initiative was recognized and the young professional was soon working alongside Burt Waller, then CEO of CCHS, doing outreach service.
In 2003, the administrative team asked her to consider accepting the practice administrator position, which entailed overseeing the organization’s two clinics. “I thought they were crazy!” Leatherwood says, with a laugh. “One clinic was having personnel problems. The person before me kept getting white paint poured onto her black Cadillac. There was significant upheaval and I was just 30 years old. I thought, ‘Have you lost your minds?’”
But Waller was confident in Leatherwood’s abilities. He told her, “Go home and pray about it and come back on Monday with your decision.”
Prayer and her Christian tenets play a significant role in Leatherwood’s life; it’s largely why she chose the work she does. So she spent one Saturday morning focusing on her daily devotion, “And I realized God leads you to challenges that seem fearful. That was when I knew I was supposed to do it.”
Underwood’s promotion proved providential, as it gave Leatherwood an opportunity to learn all facets of the organization, doing most everything “except being a provider,” she says. During the next decade as the CCHS practice administrator, additional grants she helped to procure enabled the organization to grow substantially, expanding from two clinics to six. It also led to the building of a much-needed clinic in Frayser, a $5 million, 19,000-square-foot facility with medical, dental, and pharmacy staff. “And it’s beautiful,” she notes.
Of course, Leatherwood’s ascent didn’t come without some heartache. A schism caused significant upheaval at CCHS during 2012, leading to a parting of ways with one of the organization’s founders. With him went more than 20 providers who, in a sign of fidelity, resigned en masse. The organization is still rebounding from that today, she says, since with the departees went much institutional knowledge.
But Leatherwood did her best to stay neutral during the ordeal, and she believes the fracture also provided a valuable lesson.
“Help someone carry out their vision,” she says, “and you might one day be able to carry out your own.” In 2013, she became the organization’s chief administrative officer, before taking the CEO position in 2017.
Of course, carrying out a vision while being married and raising two school-aged children is no small task. Leatherwood readily acknowledges that unwavering support from her husband, Charles Leatherwood, enables her to find the elusive work/life balance so many executives strive for. Charles works nights at the FedEx hub so he can be available for his family during the day. In addition to managing her work duties, Leatherwood makes time to participate in her children’s lives, taking 7-year-old son Charles Jr. to soccer practice or 10-year-old daughter Alexis to swim meets. Weekends are strictly devoted to her family and church life at Bellevue Baptist, where she sings in the choir.
As for being a black woman in a leadership role, Leatherwood hopes her journey encourages other women who have dreams to strive for their goals. Her advice?
“I would say be humble. Do what’s asked of you. Seek out opportunities to learn and grow. Don’t try to rush your way to the top. Take the necessary steps because there are lessons along the way,” she says. “Also, if your boss says to get professional development, do it. In a leadership role, you must be humble, relatable, and a team player to achieve goals — and I have lofty goals.”
