Impact Austin members, their friends, and prospective members gathered at Design With Consignment on September 14th for a member recruitment event. Our hostess, owner Lisa Gaynor, graciously rolled out the red carpet for us, with food and wine and amazing hospitality. We took this opportunity to learn about Lisa and her business and also welcomed her as a new Impact Austin member!
A Little Background on Design With Consignment:
While pursuing successful careers in “Corporate America,” Design With Consignment’s owners Lisa and Dan Gaynor dreamed about starting a business of their own. Dan’s corporate experience focused on such “left-brain” activities as developing business systems and processes, while Lisa’s background was firmly on the “right brain” side in creative marketing and public relations. Together, they knew they had they could create something really special. Since Design With Consignment’s opening of their upscale furniture consignment showroom in 2005, the Gaynors found and recruited several highly talented and experienced Austinites who share their passion for fine furnishings and top-level service. These professionals now round out the showroom’s team and give depth to the original mission--defining and living by a set of Core Values, and while Design With Consignment is not organizationally tied to any single charity or cause, they have found many opportunities to give back to our community. As a result, we have made social responsibility a key focus of our organizational objective: “Our mission is to create and operate the finest, most reputable luxury furniture consignment shop on the planet."
Our Community Partner Speaker:
Impact Austin members were treated to a presentation from Laura Wolf, Executive Director of CASA of Travis County. Laura spoke eloquently about the difference Impact Austin’s 2014 grant made for them and their clients. This grant funded “Trauma-Informed Care in the Foster Care System,” intended to improve and standardize the level of skills for providers through a collaborative training system developed at Texas Christian University. The overarching goal of this collaboration is to help foster youth healing more quickly from the trauma of abuse and neglect by surrounding them with volunteers and child care professionals trained in the principles of Trust-Based Relational Intervention. The main principles of this approach focus on identifying, understanding, and responding to the child's needs rather than their behavior, and this project provides necessary training to volunteers and community partners.
Our many thanks to Lisa Gaynor for hosting, and Laura Wolf for speaking and making this one of the loveliest Impact Austin Membership Recruitment events, ever. Thank you, too, to the Westwood High students who spent their evening photographing the event for us!
We look forward to seeing you at the next Impact Austin Membership Recruitment Event on October 14th!
