Lori Heninger
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Lori Heninger
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Laughter might not be a part of her job description, but for Lori Heninger, it's an important element in work as in life. It's especially valuable when working with teens, even those living in dire conditions, as she has found from visits to Third World countries around the globe. As the new Executive Director of HiTOPS — she took over the reins from founder Bonnie Parker in June, just as the Princeton teen health center was entering its 20th year — Ms. Heninger combines a sense of fun with a deep professional regard for integrity. She clearly relishes her new position and the fact that she is no longer required to spend a third of her year traveling as she did for her previous work with refugees in places like Darfur and Chad, and with youth groups in northern Uganda. The change, may in part explain why Ms. Heninger, a youthful 49, appears so relaxed in her new spot on Wiggins Street. Dr. Heninger has a Ph.D. from the City University Graduate Center and a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She lives in Asbury Park with her husband, three dogs and a cat.
I'm a great fan of the Princeton Public Library's books-on-tape, which make my long commute feel like 10 or 15 minutes. Their selection is fantastic, so I'm better read than anytime since graduate school.
In work as in life, I'm always looking for ways in which to do the best job possible and have a good time doing it. There's a part of me that's professional, working with transparency and integrity, but there is also a part that says don't lose the spark. I believe it's possible to live with integrity and have fun, too.
Immediately before coming to HiTOPS I worked for the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children in New York City. I ran the children and adolescent program, insuring that refugees or internally displaced young people had access to education. I spent about a third of my year outside of the United States doing research and advocacy in Darfur, Chad, northern Uganda, and other areas. We asked young people, young women in particular, and their mothers, what do you want now for your daughters, right here in the refugee camp?
Even though they were hungry, even though they were cold, and living in a miserable situation, what they wanted was education for their daughters and for themselves: to learn to read and write. It's hard to conceptualize losing everything and it was a surprise to hear that from people who had lost their family members and their homes — everything except their dignity, their smarts, and their resilience.
For six years before that I ran the Quaker United Nations office and did a lot of traveling there, too. I've realized in the last six months in Princeton, how much I appreciate having weekends when I don't have to jam everything in, visits to family, family functions and so on, because of having to be out of the country so often.
HiTOPS is a good fit for me. I love working with youth and with community-based organizations in Newark, in Trenton, and looking at other cities to begin working with urban youth. The problems that urban youth experience here in New Jersey are not that dissimilar to those faced by youth in situations of displacement in other parts of the world. It's the whole body change thing. They're united by what's happening to their bodies.
HiTOPS
In a typical day at HiTOPS, I do a lot of work on my computer, e-mails, answering questions, mainly from the heads of other community-based organizations. I talk regularly with people in Planned Parenthood in Trenton and at Answer at Rutgers. I talk to my board a lot and I have hour-long meetings every week with each of my senior staff to touch base. I do a lot of fundraising and administrative work to insure transparency and that we run a tight ship, and also to forge community and state relationships, to make sure that young people get what they need.
It is my personal goal to make sure that young people across the United States and around the world have access to appropriate health services that really meet their needs. Pediatricians are fabulous but by and large they don't do pelvic exams on young women, and they don't provide birth control. Young people may be reluctant to talk to their pediatricians about reproductive health or to ask the question, "Is this normal or is there something wrong with me?" of a doctor they may have known since they were a baby.
At HiTOPS we serve young people, parents, educators, and health professionals in Mercer County. Our health center is for young men and women aged 13 through to their 27th birthday. We offer education programs for parents and health professionals in Princeton, all over Mercer County, and all over the state. Our peer education program, Teen PEP (teen prevention education program) is in 50 high schools across the state, that's peer health and reproductive health education.
Often people think that HiTOPS is just a teen reproductive health center. We are so much more. We offer smoking cessation, parent groups, nutritional counseling, and we have physical activities, sometimes yoga. It's not just sex. It's the young person as a whole being. We don't do procedures and we don't do terminations. If a young woman comes to us pregnant, we offer options counseling and can provide referrals in whatever direction she chooses.
I like to tell people that we teach critical thinking skills so that young people can make good decisions so that they can have brighter futures. When helping young people pay for their health center visits, for example, we're imparting basic budgeting skills. Pointing out cost comparisons between health needs and number of weekly visits to the coffee shop can be enlightening.
The staff is incredible here, really smart and really committed. After 20 years, it's common for organizations to get off track, to suffer from "mission creep." That hasn't happened here. HiTOPS puts caring for young people at the top of the pyramid. When an organization in the business of service keeps those it serves as its top priority, everything else falls into place.
HiTOPS founder, Bonnie Parker, was fantastic when I first started. We overlapped for two weeks and Bonnie gave me something far better than words of wisdom: she opened the door for me and allowed me to take the reins. I take my hat off to her for that, for her generosity of spirit. Bonnie will be the honoree at our gala next year [HiTOPS biggest annual fundraiser is set for April 27].
Family and Fish
My husband Jack Patterson and I have three children. Jack is a consultant for the American Friends Service Committee; we worked together at the Quaker U.N. office. My stepson John is a scenic artist in film and television. He's 35. Mairead is 27 and manages a bar in Hoboken. Our youngest, Thea, is 21 and at the College of Mount Saint Vincent — a girl from a nice Quaker family at a nice Catholic college. They're great kids.
The most important thing I've learned from parenting is to pay attention to your kids. Put your agenda aside and pay attention to where your child is. Loving your kid is profound but paying attention, putting your agenda aside, is hard.
I finished my Ph.D. in Social Welfare about a year and a half ago and at the same time I worked on my first book, The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of Sub-Aquatic Life. It's in the process of being self-published and it has 50 illustrations inspired by the hidden life of sub-aquatic animals. The drawings have playful titles like "When Starfish Become Reality TV stars: Pacific Idol Season II," and "Who Fish Go To for Bedtime Reading." Why fish? I love to scuba dive. Fish are beautiful in their movement and diversity. It's astonishing what lives under the sea.
Creativity runs through a person and, like the "whack-a-mole" game, if you don't do it in one way in pops out in another form. I had a wholesale business making art jewelry and sculpture for ten years. When I closed my studio to go back to school, I started doing 2-dimensional work. I don't take a lot of credit for it. A lot of times, a drawing will simply happen on the page in my head. I almost feel as if I'm tracing the lines. It's very relaxing and mentally organizing.
I grew up in Cranford in Union county, and I spent about 22 years in New York, upstate and in the city, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. My father worked the night shift in Budweiser and my mother was the first in her family of her generation to graduate from high school. There was always a big work ethic combined with a lot of laughter at home.