Today’s Houston Furniture Bank (HFB) Board Spotlight features Board Member Jessica Newhouse. Though she’s a new addition to the Houston Furniture Bank Board – officially joining in 2018 – Jessica was involved with HFB prior to joining. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, she created a non-profit project – HAULforHOUSTON – to collect furniture and housewares from around the country through a network of volunteers and donors without the means to get them down to Southeast Texas. She was connected to HFB Executive Director Oli Mohammed through her former Rice University professor, David VanHorn (an HFB Advisory Board member), and HAUL became an HFB project.
Jessica is passionate about creating better opportunities for people by making better use of existing resources and finding creative ways to bring them together. In addition to working with HFB, she looks for ways to accomplish this in the commercial real estate industry and is currently working on a new development concept for apartment living through her company – HALL+HAVEN.
She is a baseball fan, keeping the Houston Astros calendar synced with her Outlook calendar and watching as many games as possible. And, yes, she’s also a football fan, keeping up with Aggie football whenever possible. Jessica and her husband David also keep busy chasing three dogs around.
Though she is new to the organization, Jessica has been impressed by the efforts and dedication of the HFB team. “This organization is relentless in their efforts to change lives in Houston. They have a huge vision and even bigger hearts,” she said. “Furnishings turn over in our homes and communities a lot, and HFB has incredible capacity to turn that into something meaningful for Houstonians. Awareness is key. When you think furniture, think of the HFB, and help us spread the word.”
Thank you, Jessica, for joining our efforts in Making Empty Houses Homes!