Adoptee now heads Catholic Charities, the agency that arranged her adoption

By Scott McConnaha of the Catholic Herald Staff

ST. FRANCIS - Though she's worked for Catholic Charities for almost 20 years, Diane Knight's relationship with the organization started much earlier, during her childhood, in fact. Knight, executive director of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, was herself adopted through Catholic Charities.

"It is one of the rather humbling things about finding myself where I am.... I'm sure that neither my birth mother, nor my adoptive parents, nor anybody in the agency would've ever dreamed that any child they placed (for adoption) would one day be executive director of the agency. That's a rather awesome thing when you think about it," she said.

Though Catholic Charities has been serving people in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee since 1920, Knight believes it's time to tell everyone who they are.

"In general we're not well known, even in the Catholic community," Knight told the Catholic Herald during an interview in her Cousins Center office. Catholic Charities USA, based in Alexandria, Va., of which Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Inc. is a member, conducted a survey a couple years ago and found that when asked about charities they were aware of, people mentioned Catholic Charities only 4 percent of the time, while other organizations, such as American Red Cross and Salvation Army, were mentioned much more, she said.

Knight explained that name recognition is part of the problem. "That's one of the reasons we changed our name from Catholic Social Services to Catholic Charities in 1997. There's a need for us to get ourselves better known out there," she said.

One way Knight hopes her organization will become better known in the archdiocese is through Catholic Charities Week, which began Oct. 28. "I think one of the reasons we're so invisible ... is because we do so many different things in different communities. We don't have a single identity for any one thing," she said.

Most people aren't aware of many of the services provided by Catholic Charities, Knight said. "A lot of people have no awareness at all that we serve developmentally disabled adults, for example.... (There's also) the newly developed immigration legal services program. Lots of people don't know that we resettle refugees," she said, and added that they also offer counseling, services for the elderly, child welfare and child abuse prevention programs.

Knight began working for Catholic Charities in January 1991 as the director of program services, supervising all the different programs and regions for the whole archdiocesan agency.

Before that, she worked for 20 years in the Milwaukee County Human Services Department, "doing really just about every aspect of child welfare that there was. (From 1989 to 1990) I was the supervisor of the foster care program," she said.

"The problems that led to the state take-over of the county system already were in evidence at that time. It was one of those things where I had a lot of responsibility and no authority or control or ability to change anything. It got to me.

"I began looking (for another job), and the position here at Catholic Charities had just recently been advertised. I've been an active Catholic all my life ... and I saw that as a great opportunity to really bring my faith life and my work life together, and so I applied, and here I am," she said with a smile.

In February 2000, Knight was tapped to be acting executive director of the agency, then in April 2001, she was appointed executive director by the board of trustees of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Inc.

"I never had the ambition to become an executive director.... In coming here I've found what I thought would be the case when I read the ad (in 1990), that I could bring my faith life and my work life together. Turns out to be true. So that's very appealing to me. And particularly with Archbishop (Rembert G.) Weakland, and his leadership, it's wonderful to be able to work here and be a part of that," she said.

Under her leadership, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee is heading in a new direction. "We spent a lot of time during that transitional year, when I was acting executive director, talking about who we've been in the past and who we want to be in the future," she explained.

The agency is now being restructured to be more program-centered in its method of organization, rather than divided geographically. "Being determined to operate as one organization is important to us, (and) being clearly identified as a ministry of the church more than we have been in the past" is also important, she said.

"Our name's always been Catholic, but I think we have felt there were many ways in which there wasn't enough to distinguish us from any other social service agency. We want to be much more intentional and much more clear about our identity as a ministry of the church.

"One of the things we're doing to kind of prepare ourselves for this new direction is going out and just doing listening sessions with parishes to ask 'What are the needs that you're seeing in the community?' We need to go out and listen first ... and then begin to shape our responses with them, rather than for them. That's a whole new thrust for us, and I'm really very proud of that," Knight said.

"If I had a vision for the Catholic community of this archdiocese, it would be that people in the pew really know who we are and own us. And when (parishioners) hear 'Catholic Charities,' they'll say 'That's my agency. That agency does much needed work on my behalf as a Catholic.' That's part of my hope and vision for the future. We really are a ministry of the entire church of this archdiocese," she said.

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