Staff at the Trailhead Community Health Foundation of Greater Akron have been hard at work growing their team and setting up the organization since its creation in October.
The health grantmaking and fundraising organization launched with proceeds from Summa Health’s purchase by global venture capital firm General Catalyst’s Health Assurance Transformation Company. Since then, a small, women-led team, alongside a board of directors, has been working to build the multi-million dollar foundation from the ground up.
“We are building something that is bigger than us that has the potential to significantly bring health, opportunity, joy to a lot of people across the region,” CEO and President Tracy Carter said.
The organization hopes to begin grantmaking to local health and wellness nonprofits by the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2027 at the latest, Carter said. In the meantime, the team recently made two new appointments, hiring a senior program officer and a chief financial officer.
The team is also going through a strategic planning process to outline what specific priorities the foundation will work to support and is finishing a search for a chief development officer, Carter said.
“Nonprofits, most of them are largely funded by the government,” Carter said. “There’s been a lot of changes in funding, reimbursement for those organizations, and so we look forward to coming in and adding additional investment, complementary investment, to the region when it comes to health and wellness.”
What is Trailhead?
Trailhead exists to promote the health of Greater Akron, including Summit, Medina, Portage, Stark and Wayne counties. The foundation will work to advance and promote access to healthcare, as well as support medical and scientific research.
“We ultimately want to make sure that this foundation, this asset, is positioned to be a model, a national model, for transformational advancement and health and wellness for local communities,” Carter said.
Trailhead is a nonprofit foundation, independently owned and operated from Summa Health. It is being initially funded with the proceeds of the HATCo’s transaction alongside pre-existing assets held by the former Summa Foundation.
The foundation will get the remaining proceeds from the $500 million sale after HATCo pays Summa’s debts.
The exact amount the foundation will receive is still be finalized, Carter said. But according to a document filed by Summa and HATCo with the Attorney General’s office, the foundation will have “a combined amount estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The foundation also has a $15 million stake in Summa that it will hold for three years under a stipulation by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which had to review the deal.
Donations are accepted on Trailhead’s website.
Janet Hardie, Trailhead’s senior donor relations and communications specialist, was the organization’s first employee, transitioning from her role at the Summa Foundation.
Carter was named Trailhead’s first president and CEO in November. She previously served as Summa’s system director for government affairs and health policy.
Carter and her team have worked to develop the foundation’s governance structure, which consists of multiple committees of trustees and community leaders to oversee donor relations, monitoring and compliance and grantmaking.
“I couldn’t have picked a better selection of teammates,” Hardie said. “We’re starting to gel, and I’m excited for what we will accomplish together.”
Committees will be formally activated in early April.
“This is a very big opportunity to tackle,” Carter said. “But with a strategic planning process, we’re going to get really focused, very strategic and very intentional about what it is we do, what are our assets and relationships to benefit the region.”
Community conversations identify top health needs in Greater Akron
Since January, Trailhead has held around 30 conversations and visits with local health and wellness nonprofits across the five-county region, as well as with universities and local governments, Carter said.
“That vision of helping everyone, wherever they are across the five-county region — suburban, rural, urban — is what I am fired up about,” she said.
These conversations do not guarantee the nonprofits will receive funding. Trailhead’s team visits them to learn about how each organization is contributing to health and wellness, as well as where they see unmet health needs from their perspective.
“We are very intentional about hearing from the community,” said Trailhead’s newly appointed senior program officer, Iriel Hopkins. “Our plan is going to be derived from [community conversations] because of what we hear from them. They’re the experts, so this is not a top-down approach.”
“We are listening, we are learning and we are working with the community so this benefits and impacts the people who definitely need the resources the most,” Hopkins said.
Carter said some themes coming out of the conversations include rural health, especially in Portage, Wayne and pockets of Medina; maternal and child health; behavioral health; population health and healthy housing.
She said mental health also has popped up in every conversation across every community, specifically for young and older adults.
“We’ve talked to public health leaders, the commissioners across the five-county region,” Carter said. “It’s very clear that they continue to not have enough resources to do what it is they do in terms of population health.”
To address these issues, Trailhead is hiring experts to aid in studying and strategic planning.
The team is looking to hear from more health and wellness nonprofit leaders in Medina and Stark counties to understand their needs. Nonprofits can request a conversation on Trailhead’s website.
Hopkins said she is working on getting the grant application software ready to go for nonprofits to use. Once Trailhead begins to receive applications, the grants committee will review and present them to the board for final approval.
“I would hope to add innovation and then really getting to the root causes of some of the unmet health needs that we have … not just giving out dollars, but being a part of a bigger change,” Hopkins said.
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New appointments and team goals
Hopkins joined Trailhead’s team in early March. She has a background working at Summit County Public Health on chronic disease and maternal and child health data and strategies. She also served as Summa Health’s community relations and diversity system director, which she said helped her understand community needs.
“When the opportunity to serve at Trailhead came about, it was a seamless fit,” Hopkins said. “My thing is always community — how to uplift the community, how to empower the community, how to be a part of the solution.”
Born and raised in Akron, Hopkins said she attended after-school programs growing up, which she believes contributed to her success.
“Being able to come back and be a part of providing opportunities for other youth has been tremendous,” she said.
Also recently appointed to Trailhead’s team is Eustacia Netzel-Hatcher, who will be serving as chief financial officer. She began her role in late March and will coach and advise the organization on financial strategies to achieve its vision.
Netzel-Hatcher has a background in corporate accounting and banking. She is transitioning to Trailhead from her role at the Cleveland Zoological Society, where she served as director of finance.
“It’s this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really be able to help shape the organization and help move it to where it’s going to go, help fulfill its vision and its mission,” she said.
As a lifelong Northeast Ohio resident, Netzel-Hatcher said she is very tied to the community and has developed a passion for mission-based work — something her teammates echoed.
“We all have a heart to just really make a difference in people’s lives,” Hardie said. “It is life by life, family by family. I think that’s exciting, and to positively influence somebody’s quality of life would be an ideal outcome.”
Carter said in an ideal world, she hopes Trailhead will reduce barriers to seeing providers, lessen community disease and sickness and give nonprofits the resources to serve people.
“Because we are here, this leadership team, our trustees, we’re going to build an organization that grows in size so that there will forever be enough capital investment to protect the health and economic well-being of our community,” she said.
Lauren Cohen is a community reporting intern for the Akron Beacon Journal and Signal Akron. The position is funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation, which is also a financial supporter of Signal Akron.
