Investing in Her Community's Future - HSNT Board Member Spotlight

There really is no place like home, after all – even for someone who has been around the world, it’s nice to be able to return to somewhere that you can call home. For HSNT board member April Powell, that place is here, in Denton, Texas.

“Originally I’m from Utah, but I’ve lived most of my life in Texas,” April says. “I love to travel, and I’ve lived all over, from California to Hawaii to Italy…but I always come back to Texas. Both my husband’s family and mine live in Texas, so moving to Denton kept us close to home.”

April has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from BYU-Hawaii and is a full-time mother of two young daughters, the oldest of which is the reason for April’s discovery of HSNT in the first place. Being their first child, April and her husband wanted to find the best care for their daughter’s formative years.

“When we first moved to Denton, I was looking for a place to establish my oldest daughter’s healthcare. We tried other places within our network and came across a couple that were just not the right fit.  Then we found HSNT and their services felt up to par with our expectations as parents.”

During one of these appointments with her daughters, April was approached by Teri Johnson, HSNT’s Marketing & Communications Director – and she had a proposition for them.

“When I met Teri, she had been observing my children, my husband and I, while we waited for the appointment. Later she introduced herself and said that we might be a good fit to serve as consumer board members for HSNT and offered us an opportunity to apply as such. After going through the interview process, we were officially offered a position on the board. My husband and I then discussed which one of us would be best suited for this opportunity and it was a natural inclination for me to volunteer. My home and church culture growing up was that I should step up and take on responsibilities for a successful home and community. So, it was an easy response for me – having that culture of service in my life.”

Outside of the HSNT board, April is pursuing the idea of creating a non-profit that primarily finds solutions for food waste as well as hunger in the community. She is grateful for the learning opportunity that serving on the HSNT board provides her.

“I see that there is a big problem with food waste, which is at the cost of our environment and with so many in our country and around the world suffering from hunger, it doesn’t have to be that way.”  

April says. “Working on this project is a lot of work and the process is slow, but it’s something that I hope to get running in the future because it’s important to me, our local and global communities.”

With her innate sense of service already driving her, April sees her role on the HSNT board as one of advocacy. As a biracial mother, she knows that she can be the voice for many of HSNT’s patients because she can relate to a variety of specific situations, and she hopes that being that voice will make a positive impact on the people HSNT serves.

“I also have a degree in Inter-Cultural Communications, and so I believe this also contributes to giving me some legitimacy serving on this board… I think my knowledge in this offers a unique perspective of how cultures in our community interact,” April says.

“I believe my identity as a woman, a mother, and person of color definitely puts me in a position to represent a variety of groups of people and the decision-making that affects them. So, I hope to keep being that voice for any of these groups, as well as to learn more for myself and the benefit of our community. When one can find a way to help serve a community, it is good for everyone.”