Seeing the Whole Person: 2026 Practitioner Insights Speakers
Updated: 2 days ago
Every summer, SHECP's Practitioner Insights Series invites leaders doing anti-poverty work to share how their organizations address poverty in their communities and to reflect on their own career paths with SHECP’s summer interns. This summer, four practitioners joined the series, each drawing on a different aspect of anti-poverty work: Sam Wilmoth, Senior Manager of Consulting for RAINN, whose work supports survivors of sexual violence; Ryan Wolfe, Co-Founder of ZLS.app, who spent more than a decade as a public defender; LaToya Scott, Residential Director at Tharros Place, who leads a home for survivors of human trafficking; and Greta Nelson, Dental Clinic Coordinator for WV Health Right, who brings dental care to rural West Virginia communities that would otherwise go without it.
Despite representing four distinct fields, the speakers converged at the same starting point: anti-poverty work succeeds only when people treat their constituents as complete individuals, not as problems to be managed or moments to be judged. That commitment to seeing the whole person surfaced in every practitioner’s talk this summer.
Wilmoth carried that lesson from his own internship with the D.C. Public Defender Service into his current work with survivors of sexual violence, recalling advice from a mentor that has shaped his approach to every case since.
“Every person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. And if you cannot…really work with it, then you’re not going to be able to help people.” – Sam Wilmoth, Senior Manager of Consulting for RAINN
Wolfe echoed that same conviction from the defense side, describing how he steps in beside clients at their lowest moment, regardless of the charge against them or the choices that led them there.
“They’re all human beings that are deserving of respect, dignity, and an advocate. I’m just here for you; I’m only fighting for you.” – Ryan Wolfe, defense lawyer and co-founder of ZLS.app
Scott built her approach to trauma-informed care at Tharros Place around the same idea, asserting that a survivor’s history should inform their care without ever being allowed to define who that person is.
“You have been hurt, you had these vulnerabilities, but it doesn’t mean that you are those vulnerabilities. Healing from that trauma is a journey with no expiration date.” – LaToya Scott, Residential Director at Tharros Place
Beyond seeing the whole person, the 2026 practitioners highlighted the resourcefulness required to serve communities where formal infrastructure and funding fall short. Wilmoth pointed to the advantage of close relationships in rural communities, where forming strong ties with local officials can substitute for formal infrastructure larger cities take for granted. Nelson described a parallel reality in West Virginia, where WV Health Right runs a mobile dental unit in six counties on grand funding alone, stitching together a network of volunteer providers she calls a “quilt of care.”
"There’s no public transportation; there’s no dentists in the community…people take the ambulance to the hospital because they don’t have any other options.” – Greta Nelson, WV Health Right
At the end of each event, speakers turned from their organizations’ work to their own careers, reflecting candidly on what allows them to sustain years in emotionally demanding fields.
Wilmoth urged interns to hold two identities at once, encouraging them to separate stress caused by structural problems from any sense of personal failure: “Be radicals who reimagine what is possible and pragmatists who are managing the resources that exist today. Be both, don’t always put it all on you.”
Wolfe said what sustains him after more than a decade as a public defender is not necessarily winning, but knowing his clients felt heard, even when a case does not go his way:“I lost the trial, but I won in knowing that the person walked away feel like they had been heard and seen and represented.”
Scott traced her own burnout to a habit of counting only finished tasks as real work and now urges interns to celebrate progress rather than waiting for completion. Nelson, who once planned to become a lawyer before finding her way into dental hygiene, said her winding path has convinced her that sustainable work and enjoyable work can be the same thing: “If you enjoy what you do, you won’t work a day in your life. The only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself.”
Interested in learning more about the speakers? You can find their bios here: Introducing the 2026 Practitioner Insights Speakers For more information on any of SHECP's virtual events, email us at info@shepherdconsortium.org.
