John LeBlanc could never have predicted that his career would lead him to Annandale, and the top job at True Friends, a non-profit that is a leader in providing experiences to children and adults with disabilities.
He took over for Ed Stracke in January as president and CEO of the privately-funded organization that runs Camp Friendship and Camp Courage, among others. The winding path he took to get here was undeniably important to preparing him for this opportunity.
However, it never would have come about without his wife, Michelle, or their youngest son, Michael.
They were looking for a camping experience for 12-year-old Michael, who has a physical disability, in the summer of 2014 and learned of Camp Courage.
"When we picked him up from his first camp experience, he was so excited to give us a tour and show us all the things he did during his week of camp," LeBlanc said. "Right then I realized how impactful True Friends is for participants and their families."
Michael enjoyed the camp so much his parents signed him up for another camp a month later, this one at Camp Friendship. Since then, Michael has become a volunteer for three weeks a year at Camp Friendship.At roughly the same time that summer, Michelle found a job posting and brought it to her husband’s attention, wondering if it was something he would be interested in.
Turns out he was. He was taken with the beauty of Camp Courage, and the work that was being done there. He remembers thinking, "If I can be a part of this …"
For eight years he had been at Saint Therese, a nonprofit Catholic organization providing senior care and housing at a handful of Twin Cities area campuses. Starting as a fundraiser, over eight years he did a little of everything, eventually becoming executive director of development and marketing.
He earned his nursing home administrator license because he wanted to know more about how fundraising fit in with senior care.
"The business of senior care is so complicated, I had to solve the puzzle of how philanthropy fits in. One way to do that was to become an administrator," LeBlanc said.
What he learned there has informed so much of what they do at True Friends, he said, noting how its programs are highly-regulated, which is also true of the nursing home industry.
While leading Saint Therese was rewarding, he discovered that he missed working side-by-side with colleagues toward a common goal.
"I had a phenomenal experience there. But I wanted to step out of leadership and be on a team again. I wanted to prove I could be a good team member, and help people with estate planning," he said.
True Friends afforded him that opportunity in 2014 with the role of development officer. Within a year he took on the role of chief operations officer.
When Stracke announced his intentions to step down after 33 years at the helm, True Friends turned to Cohen-Taylor, a search firm. LeBlanc was chosen from a group of five finalists.
Uncommon route
LeBlanc has taken an unconventional route almost from the start. He was raised in a Catholic family in northwestern Minnesota, and while others were seeking four-year college degrees, he sought another path, joining the Up With People cast for a year. Through musical stage productions, members travel the world. living with host families, participating in service projects and learning about different cultures.
"I wanted to do something to make the world a better place," said LeBlanc, who played guitar in the band and did some singing as they toured 35 states and 14 countries, while living with 78 host families. It was an eye-opening, life-changing experience.
"There are so many people and so many different people, and different experiences. But we’re really a lot more the same than different," he said. "Whatever country they come from, young people need education, they want to fall in love and have a family and friends and a good job."
He was in the familiar position of not knowing what to do with his life. LeBlanc had harbored thoughts of the priesthood and working in a parish, and recalls how he would have been happy to simply live in a rectory, playing his guitar and mowing lawn and performing liturgical music.
A friend connected him to the second largest Catholic church in Minnesota, St. Stephen’s in Anoka, where he became a youth minister.
"During that year, I was on my way to figuring it out," LeBlanc said.
During his time at Saint John Vianney College Seminary on the University of St. Thomas campus in St. Paul, he met his wife, who was also a theology major. They got married and moved to Jamaica for a year, where they lived in a Jesuit school and worked at a pre-vocational school.
"We weren’t done with our appetite to do more," said LeBlanc.
They also had an opportunity to go to Venezuela. It was his first experience with real poverty.
"I knew from then on I would be doing something with the marginalized, the poor. I knew everything I would do would have to be connected with that," he said.
Returning to Minnesota, LeBlanc obtained his master’s degree in theology and spirituality from St. Catherine University in St. Paul. He took a part-time job at Catholic Charities in the Twin Cities and was working in a furniture warehouse, collecting used furniture for people in need, when he recalls being asked if he had ever considered fundraising work.
"After a while that question was a seed, and it wasn’t that long after that I got to join the development team of Catholic Charities, a fundraising team, working with people and their estate gifts."
When LeBlanc’s spiritual director in the seminary asked him to help with a small parish in North Minneapolis, he became the business manager and fundraiser. He also spent two years as a development officer at the Children’s Home Society of Minnesota, through which the LeBlancs adopted three of their four children.
A better place
One constant in LeBlanc’s jobs was that his career prior to True Friends didn’t go according to any grand plan, and that same pattern emerged since taking the job as a gift planner in 2014.
"I loved it. It was a great job," he said, noting the only reason the job existed was Stracke’s desire to assist people in allowing their legacy live on through financial support of what matters most to them, with True Friends being one of the beneficiaries.
Stracke asked him to become True Friends’ chief operations officer the following year, and LeBlanc inherited the finance portion a year later. Now he holds Stracke’s job, and as special ambassador, Stracke will be the one working with people’s estate plans, helping them to create endowments.
"This wasn’t by design," LeBlanc said of his CEO title. "I have been pretty lucky, pretty blessed. It’s really crazy when you think about it, that doing all those different things over the years leads to this."
At a previous job, he remembers a woman telling him that her goal was to someday make a six-figure salary.
"That really caught me, because I don’t have that goal. The other goal I never had was to be an executive director. My goal was to be a good team member."
The 52-year-old LeBlanc has been impressed by his team, and True Friends’ mission.
"This place exists because of Ed, because of the staff, and the community. Hands down," LeBlanc said.
"As long as we are relevant to people’s lives, we will be here," he said, pointing out that True Friends has expanded its offerings tremendously from just the camp component. If not for that, it might have closed along with so many other similar organizations.
Instead, True Friends has diversified, with:
■ Ventures Travel, a domestic and international travel program for adults with disabilities who can’t travel on their own. More than 400 people a year go on trips through this program.
■ A year-round weekend respite program for parents or caregivers of children with disabilities. "We provide relief, a getaway, a break. One board member calls it a marriage-saver," LeBlanc said.
■ Conference and retreat centers that make use of its cabins and meeting spaces all year long, instead of being used only as a seasonal enterprise.
■ True Strides therapy serves 60 people a week year-round with a staff of 12 horses.
■ Teamquest, a team-building and leadership program that serves more than 5,000 annually.
In all, LeBlanc figures that between 20,000 and 25,000 individuals are directly impacted every year by True Friends.
In addition to as many as 15,000 people through the group’s rental, conference and retreat business, there are family members being served, not to mention volunteers.
True Friends is also a local employer, with almost 400 people hired every summer to run the camps or the 100 or more year-round employees who work with the respite and travel programs.
That’s one very large footprint.
"Think of how many people have been hired here over 60 years. They have gotten a job, some have gotten introduced to working with people with a disability," said LeBlanc. "Really this is a youth development organization. As someone said, we’re developing young people here."
More than 60 years later, True Friends aims to keep doing so. LeBlanc believes the future is bright, but stresses the importance of every component.
"It’s going to take everyone – our staff, our families, strengthening our partnerships with the families we serve, maintaining the relations we have with the community at large to value this," he said.
"It’s our job to communicate the value of an organization like this in a society. Valuing people with disabilities, recognizing our own limitations and disabilities. People who are on the margins with diagnosed disabilities can be forgotten, and we can’t do that."
It is quite apparent LeBlanc’s mission is to see that never happens.