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Aug 5

Home of Guiding Hands leader takes new job at San Diego Regional Center – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Hgh Comments Off on Home of Guiding Hands leader takes new job at San Diego Regional Center – The San Diego Union-Tribune

EL CAJON

Mark Klaus, president and CEO of the East County-based Home of Guiding Hands for the past 11 years, has been tapped to lead the San Diego Regional Center, one of the countys largest nonprofits.

Klaus is credited with helping Home of Guiding Hands, which serves people with developmental challenges, grow from 400 to 4,000 clients.

Starting Nov. 1, Klaus will take over as executive director of the San Diego Regional Center, which serves about 34,000 clients in San Diego and Imperial counties. Klaus was named the head of the SDRC on Tuesday by a unanimous vote of the centers governing board.

The SDRC is one of 21 similar centers in California, all of which work with community partners like Home of Guiding Hands to serve more than 380,000 individuals with developmental disabilities. The Regional Center works with families of individuals with developmental challenges to help them achieve their goals.

Klaus will follow Carlos Flores, 66, who started with the center in 1999, became executive director in 2007, and was set to retire early in 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He stayed to see the 650-employee center through the health emergency.

San Diego Regional Center Board Chair Shirley Nakawatase said Klaus is the perfect fit. She cited Klaus and Flores close working relationship as key to a seamless transition. The two leaders have taken many trips to state and national legislatures, lobbying for developmentally challenged persons, their caretakers and families.

Mark Klaus will be the new Executive Director at the San Diego Regional Center

(Nadia Borowski Scott/ Alchemy MediaWorks)

Among other accomplishments, under Klauss leadership, HGH developed a program that concentrates on helping families with newborns through age 3. He helped 60-year-old HGH advance more community-based services and navigate 30 residential homes for adults with developmental disabilities.

Klaus will earn about $360,000 in his new role at the Regional Center. The groups operating budget is about $70 million of its overall $600 million budget. The group operates its programs and eight offices seven in San Diego County, one in the city of Imperial through grants and government assistance, mostly from the state Department of Developmental Services.

Over the last 510 days, working even closer with Carlos and his staff, I saw firsthand their values, their culture, their desires and I saw they are really aligned with Home of Guiding Hands and what I believe in, said Klaus, 58. I am grateful to have the opportunity to have an even larger impact on the people we serve.

Klaus said that while a high school student in Illinois, he volunteered with a company that worked with individuals with disabilities, not thinking at the time that it would become his future avocation.

After earning a bachelors degree in economics from the University of Illinois, he started working in the field and worked his way up to President and Chief Executive Officer of Charleston Transitional Facility in Champaign, Ill. He later spent 10 years heading the nonprofit CTF Illinois, which provides programs and services for those with developmental disabilities and mental illness.

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Home of Guiding Hands leader takes new job at San Diego Regional Center - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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