A young man sitting behind steel doors in a secure treatment facility once told Nicholas Hill something that rearranged his life. The teenager, recovering from a suicide attempt, studied Hill during weeks of one-on-one supervision and finally said: "You seem like you really care. If you truly care, I don't think you should work here." He told Hill about a place called Bethany Children's Home, a campus in southeastern Pennsylvania where kids slept in real bedrooms, ate meals in kitchens, lived in something called cottages, not units, and decorated their own walls in their bedrooms. The young man had lived there before trouble pulled him away. He remembered what it felt like to be treated like a person.
Hill went home that night, searched the name, found an open position, and applied. He was hired as a cottage support staff, the entry-level role, no supervisory authority, working shifts on the floor alongside the youth. That was eleven and a half years ago. Today, Hill is stepping into the 16th President and CEO position of Bethany Children's Home, unanimously appointed by the Board of Directors without a national search. The young man who pointed him there? He eventually returned to Bethany, completed the program, and left as a functioning young adult. Hill wrote about the experience in an organization newsletter called The Echo. He still considers it one of the defining chapters of his career.
