Laker magazine cover story: Alumni who lead in human services

Alumni Nash Bock and Michelle Jungerman work in human services. Nash leads innovation at Habitat for Humanity, while Michelle drives social impact at The Arc Ontario.

Nash Bock’s passion at FLCC was music, and he thought he would make a career of it. But his early college experience was also about community, and that struck a note when he had an opportunity to take a leadership role at Habitat for Humanity.

“I fell in love with the mission of the organization, was inspired by the people involved in the work, and opportunities presented themselves,” says Nash, now the chief business and innovation officer for Greater Rochester Habitat for Humanity. Michelle Jungermann ’99 has learned the fundamentals of starting and operating businesses as The Arc Ontario moved from sheltered workshops to mainstream ventures with a social purpose.

The organization is a recent merger of the Flower City (Monroe), Ontario and Wayne county Habitat chapters and reflects a trend in human service organizations seeking creative ways to pool resources and generate new revenue.

Michelle Jungerman ’99 has spent her entire career at another well-known social service agency, The Arc Ontario, formerly Ontario ARC. She has witnessed a transformation in the agency’s approach to helping those with intellectual and developmental disabilities build work and life skills.

What’s more, her current role as chief operating officer of the agency’s business enterprises requires her to be as much a serial entrepreneur as a social worker.

Though the business environment has changed, the approach to meeting urgent human needs remains very much about getting to know individuals and their circumstances before charting a path forward.

Michelle Jungermann ’99: The Arc Ontario

Michelle thought she might want to be a teacher when she started at FLCC. Then, a visitor to one of her classes talked about domestic violence victims.

“I got really moved by the idea of being able to help people in difficult circumstances,” she says.

Michelle’s work with The Arc Ontario has involved serving those with disabilities, something that she says “never crossed my mind” at FLCC or her transfer school, Nazareth College.

She started in 2002 as a service coordinator, writing care plans for clients. At that time,

ARCs, as they were known, often ran sheltered workshops that tailored manufacturing tasks for their clients’ abilities. The agencies bussed workers to the sites and back home again.

Now, Michelle coordinates four businesses in which Arc clients work alongside community members, for example, by ringing up orders and cleaning tables at North Star Café. 

The Arc also operates Bad Dog Boutique, a retail and grooming shop in downtown Canandaigua, and Spot On Cleaning, which provides commercial cleaning throughout Ontario County. The newest startup that combines employees with and without disabilities is FLX Premier Bottling, which packages shampoo, lotions and body wash.

Michelle has enjoyed learning from the business community, for example, getting advice from Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters as she scouted for a downtown Canandaigua site for North Star Café. The café, which moved from Farmington to 92 S. Main last fall, was the Arc’s first social enterprise in 2017. 

“It was a great opportunity to educate the community on what people with a disability can do, rather than what they couldn’t do,” she says of the trend away from sheltered workshops.

The Arc closed its workshop in 2010 and focused on finding employment training for its clients in the community. The social enterprises helped increase job opportunities while generating revenue that funds Arc services not covered by other sources, such as Medicaid. 

Michelle said the greatest challenge for her and her team of on-site business managers has been balancing the human service mission with the need to generate revenue, especially during the height of the pandemic. “We want to protect the people we support, but we also have to run a business,” she says.

All in all, the trend toward inclusion has benefited Arc employees and clients as well as the wider community.

“I love what I do. Look at where this field has come as I’ve grown with it,” Michelle marvels. “The field has changed, the acceptance has changed, the opportunities have changed.”

Though she had not envisioned herself in this particular niche while in school, the approach to human services that she learned from faculty like Barbara Chappell and John Pietropaolo is a constant, Michelle says: “You have to meet everyone where they’re at in order to help them move forward.”

Nash Bock ’06, ’14: Habitat for Humanity

After earning a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Geneseo, Nash taught private music lessons and worked at FLCC as an adjunct instructor in the music department for a few years. (His wife, Heather ’06, worked for FLCC’s Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative from 2012 through 2021). 

Nash began working at Ontario County Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore to make some extra money in the summers.

“My first job was a part-time associate, so I was literally pushing couches around, greeting donors, helping shoppers,” he says.

His role soon expanded to website development and social media strategy. In 2014, he became the program services manager, overseeing the process for selecting new families for Habitat homes and working closely with volunteers. 

“It’s very personal. We spend a year to two years working with families on their journey to becoming homeowners,” he begins. “They’re inviting us into their lives as well. We get to know them very closely. We get to know their kids. Often, you get to know their siblings or parents, too.” 

A year later, the board of directors named him executive director, overseeing everything from fundraising to volunteer management to connecting with the international organization. His role with the new, merged organization will give him the opportunity to focus on opportunities to add and expand services, for example, doing more work to repair homes. 

“Habitat really came into my life at the right time. I love playing music, but the life of a performing musician was not really the life I wanted to have, being on the road, playing late into the night,” says Nash, who has a photo of his two young daughters in his office at the ReStore building in Hopewell.

“I was learning what I wanted and what I didn’t want in my future and Habitat presented me with an opportunity to have a career that aligns with my values, is deeply rooted in community, and provided the work-life balance for Heather and I to start our own family.”

Nash has long been open to tackling something new. At FLCC, he took classes in marketing, business and computer science – he even returned to get an associate degree in computer science in 2014. While students, he and Heather joined the Finger Lakes Environmental Action Club, joining conservation professor Marty Dodge on a trip to southern California’s Channel Islands. 

“I came out of my college experience with a major in music but an ability to utilize skills in a variety of fields,” Nash says, “and I think that positioned me well to be able to try out different things and be open to new opportunities as they came along.”

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