Pay What You Can Community Café? Can a restaurant like this really work? It has in 64 communities across the country and Nancy Massey Hillman, Cleveland County native and Masters of Social Work student, wants to see it work in Shelby! Nancy is hosting a community meeting to introduce the "pay what you can" model. The open meeting will be held Tuesday, February 28, at 6:00 PM at the Cleveland Memorial Library.
Helping Hillman introduce the "pay what you can" model will be Dr. Christina (Chris) May of Boone, NC. Dr. May has published a manual on the "pay what you can model" and will be on hand to answer questions or relate experiences from other communities. The public is invited to come hear about this innovative work and help bring this concept to our community. For more information, please email Nancy Hillman at nancyhillman1994@yahoo.com.
About Dr. Chris May:
Dr. Christina (Chris) May has over 25 years of professional and volunteer leadership experience working with senior executives, military, contractors, and Congressional leaders. She has operated in all sectors - private, public, and nonprofit - both domestically and internationally. She is a retired Naval officer and during her career developed expertise in command and staff positions and in human resources, policy analysis, project and program management, business process re-engineering, budget analysis, and organizational development.
Since leaving the military, Chris has concentrated on nonprofit work. She was a co-founder of FARM Café in Boone, NC, which was recently cited by the Wall Street Journal as a must-stop on a culinary tour through Appalachia. She also serves on the board of Hospitality House of Boone, an 85-bed transitional facility serving the homeless population in a seven-county region of western NC, managing a 17-member staff and a $4.3M budget.
Chris holds a Ph.D. in Human Services with a concentration in nonprofit management. Her dissertation, titled The Pay-What-You-Can Nonprofit Restaurant Model: A Case Study, was the first known scholarly publication that describes the experience of operating a community café.
As well, Chris has earned a Master of Interfaith Divinity degree, a Master of Public Administration degree, and a graduate Certificate in Executive Leadership. In addition, she holds a certification as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and as a Certified Manager (CM).
Chris currently works as an adjunct professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.
Submitted by Nancy Hillman