Hope for Widows is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. We are guided by the board of directors who create initiatives and make decisions for the good of our community.
Chasity Williams
Paula Gleicher Greenstreet
Simone Garcia
Desiree Fransua
Melissa Peoples
Jessica Davis
Ajai Blue-Saunders
Laura Pittman
Caroline Stephenson
Chasity Williams
Chasity Williams is a nonprofit professional with an extensive background that includes C-Suite support, Operations, Corporate Event Planning, Human Resources, Client Relations, and Project Management. Chasity is also involved with several volunteer organizations that include grief facilitation, bereavement support at local hospices, and leading several online grief resources. Her passion and heart are to serve and help others. Chasity is two time published author that shares a collection of stories by widows across the globe. Each shares their own personal insight into the hidden and often unspoken challenges of losing a husband, including the emotional, mental and social shifts we are forced to reckon with in the aftermath. Visit here to read more and order a copy: Grief Diaries: Through the Eyes of a Widow and The Unwelcome Committee Chasity met her late husband at the young age of eighteen. In June of 2009, her life would forever change when she lost her husband suddenly in a lake drowning at the age of thirty-four years old. Finding out who she was again, raising her son, and living life to the fullest even after this tragedy was a mission she was eager to accomplish. Darrell and Chasity have one son together who is a recent college graduate that is now working full-time and choreographing his next big adventure. Chasity enjoys volunteering, traveling, sporting events, writing, and spending time with her family and friends.Paula Gleicher Greenstreet
Paula Gleicher Greenstreet started her career as a Software Engineer in the video manufacturing industry. After receiving her MBA from the University of Phoenix in 1993, she went into management, and then marketing. She met her soulmate, Joe, in 1997 when work moved her from Salt Lake City, Utah to Nevada City, California. They married three years later.
The Dot Com bust forced Paula to reinvent herself. With help, guidance, and support from Joe, she became a Real Estate Broker. In 2004, she and Joe merged businesses to form BroadStreet Financial Group. Ten years later, she realized she liked accounting more and became an Enrolled Agent. With Joe’s passing from Neuroendocrine Cancer on August 29, 2018, she pledged to carry on their accounting business in his honor and has continued to grow it with her five female employees.
Paula is no stranger to volunteer work. She was event chair for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life for four years and served on the steering committee for an additional four years. She was a Community Ambassador for the American Cancer Society and has traveled the country speaking to lawmakers about the importance of cancer research funding.
Paula joined Early Risers Toastmasters in 2000 and achieved Distinguished Toastmaster status in 2011. She is still an active member. She served as Toastmasters District 39 Treasurer in 2011 and has served all the officers’ roles in her club – President, Vice President Education, Vice President Membership, Secretary, Treasurer, and Sergeant at Arms.
Paula has two Rottweilers named Freddy and Barney, and two cats named Pebbles and Bam Bam. She loves visiting with her bonus family of three stepdaughters, three sons-in-law, and six grandchildren. She also enjoys gardening, reading, and more recently rediscovered her love of jigsaw puzzles.
When asked what most people do not know about her – she shared that even though she loved going Jeeping with Joe and their friends, she was usually scared spitless!
Simone Garcia
Simone Garcia has worked for the Department of Treasury for over 10 years and holds a degree in Business Management. She is also the administrator at her church. She also serves as one leader of The PBF Proverbs 31 Women’s Ministry where they enrich the lives of women body, soul, and spirit, by inspiring and encouraging women to live in the fullness that God intended.
Simone met her late husband Gregory in 1992 through a mutual friend and became best friends for over eighteen years. Simone and Gregory were married for four years and had no children. Their marriage was filled with an abundance of love and laughter. They shared a love of football, music, cooking, and Star Wars. Gregory dealt with many health issues which lead to his untimely death on Sunday, February 6, 2017. Being a sudden widow at the age of 42, Simone was lost and did not know how to navigate her first time dealing with grief. It was through a repost of an insightful meme her cousin, who also became a sudden widow, where Simone discovered Hope for Widows Foundation. Simone found that there were other women from all walks of life who were dealing with the same issues she was and that she was not alone. The Hope for Widows Foundation community became a refuge and helped her through her grief journey. Since the death of her late husband, Simone has been trying to find her purpose in her “new normal life”. Joining Hope for Widows Foundation would give an opportunity for her to share experiences, resources, and encouragement to fellow widows, especially to those who’ve never experienced grief before.
Desiree Fransua
Desiree Fransua is currently a Project Manager for an Emergency Medical Services Billing and Technology Firm where she handles new client onboarding and implementation processes for ambulance transporting agencies. She received her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Human Resource Management from Regis University and her Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University Global. Desiree has been employed in the healthcare revenue cycle industry for almost twenty years. Her experience in the industry also includes managing staff, process improvement, billing operations, payer credentialing and contracting, provider relations, and project management.
Desiree and her husband Marcus spent nearly two decades experiencing life’s precious moments together. A life full of good, bad, wonderful, terrible, blissful, gut-wrenching moments. In February 2018, just a few months before his fortieth birthday, Marcus suddenly passed away from a fatal acute subdural hematoma caused by a head injury. With this tragedy, came many challenges. Her entire world changed; now a widow and single parent. Marcus and Desiree had two sons together; ages sixteen and nine at the time. Desiree is a follower of Christ, she relies heavily on her faith to create a path towards hope and healing for herself and her children.
Desiree joined the Hope for Widows Board for many reasons but is determined to turn pain into purpose by helping other women that are also navigating their widow journey. She believes empathy, compassion, community, and fellowship make all the difference in the healing process.
Desiree enjoys attending church, volunteering, exercising, traveling, going to concerts, and making memories with her family and friends.
Melissa Peoples
Melissa PL Peoples has been serving the public in leadership positions over the past 18 years. She has a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Her experience includes leading process improvement efforts, training and developing, and building positive relationships. She is currently a certified Business Relationship Manager Professional and focuses on educating, engaging, and building professional partnerships.
Melissa lost her loving husband, Raymond, to a sudden heart attack in 2015. Grieving, child-rearing their one-year-old son at the time, and navigating “the new normal” can be a lonely journey. Her hope is that serving on the Hope for Widows Foundation Board will make a greater impact for the widow community and the resources available.
Melissa is action-focused. As a previous community blogger for Hope for Widows Foundation, Melissa hoped to provoke thought, share ideas, and encourage. Over the last year, she has served as the Newsletter Chair and desires to continue to help her sisters in the widow community. Grief is a process but moving forward is an opportunity.
Her passion is to encourage, motivate, and help others. She taps into her professional experience as well as all of the tools she learned on her journey of “the new normal”. You can also find her on Instagram @Melissa_PL_P
Jessica Davis
Jessica Davis, as a financial planner, specializes in supporting women during moments of grief, guiding them through the process of rebuilding their lives, and empowering them to move forward with confidence after the loss of a spouse. Many of her clients seek her expertise during the initial stages of widowhood, feeling overwhelmed by the numerous responsibilities and the emotional void left behind. She assists with every step, from managing immediate needs such as paying bills and organizing accounts, to developing income replacement strategies, long-term financial planning, and more, all while providing compassionate support as they navigate the emotions and stages of grief.
Her passion for serving widows and supporting women through transitional periods stemmed from a personal experience of assisting someone close to her after the unexpected passing of their spouse. This pivotal moment inspired her commitment to helping women move forward through their widowhood journey, making it her mission to provide comprehensive support and care.
With a lifelong passion for helping others, she began her career as a counselor, life coach, and personal trainer. Her counseling experience includes work with churches, schools, villages, and prisons in Rwanda, Africa, where she supported survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and helped develop community programs to foster healing and resilience. Back home in Fort Worth, Texas, she counseled women and families facing crisis pregnancies at a local help center, provided therapy for high-risk foster children in private practice, and supported adult university students through life and career transitions. This background in counseling has equipped her with deep empathy and insight into the nature of trauma, loss, and grief.
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, she is a single mother to her daughter, Karsyn, and their standard poodle, Lila. In her free time, she enjoys quilting, working out, traveling, reading, volunteering at her church and in the community, and spending quality time with friends and family.
Ajai Blue-Saunders
Laura Pittman
Laura Pittman is a storyteller at heart. She currently works as a professional writer for an IT Distribution company in their internal marketing agency. In addition, she maintains her own website www.laurabrownpittman.com, where she enjoys telling stories of men and women living out their passions in areas such as rodeo, ranching, western art, wildlife, hunting, fishing, and the outdoors.
God gave her a beautiful gift in bringing her together with her husband Keith. His love and light lives on in her heart and soul, although he went home to be with God on a tragic night when Laura was 26 years old. Among other things, they shared a love of animals, and in true complementary partnership, Laura talked to them and Keith knew how to listen to them.
Laura didn’t know how to navigate the many challenges that arose outside of the overwhelming grief. After online research, she was drawn to the storytelling and empathy she found in the Hope for Widows foundation. She is proud to give back to an organization that has connected her with so many women who have brought her hope and wants to walk alongside others on this hard shared journey.
In her free time, she enjoys horseback riding, breakaway roping, quail hunting her bird dogs, church activities, reading, and time with friends and family.
Caroline Stephenson
Caroline Stephenson is in the rebuild and rewrite of her life and story after her husband, Shayne, unexpectedly died of an accidental overdose in April 2016. Caroline was blindsided by complicated grief and widowhood at age 29. At the time of her
husband’s death, she was raising her two young daughters, working and building a business and team of women as a Beachbody coach while simultaneously practicing her additional culinary interest and craft, running her own cake and dessert business, Sweet Caroline Cakery,
in Houston, Tx.
Everything about life completely changed after April 2016. Forced to move out of their home in Texas shortly after Shayne’s death, three months later she settled herself and children in the Florida panhandle where she had married Shayne in 2009.
Caroline leaned on her experiences as a writer and creative as she transitioned from Texas to Florida in the beginnings of widowhood. She is a freelance writer and copy editor of more than ten years, published in the Chicago Daily Herald, Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and
contributed locally to 30A.com. She has maintained blogs, managed an online newsletter, and contributed to local brands and media outlets from South Florida to South Walton.
Caroline also started secondary education again and completed her Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s in this time widowed and raising her young daughters. She received her AA from Northwest Florida in 2019 and graduated with her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Florida State University in May 2023, with a research concentration and focus on grief and the young and widowed population. She holds certifications for Youth Mental Health First Aid and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She also created and facilitated a peer to peer support community, Widow Speak, on Facebook in 2018. Since relocating to Florida, she has worked at Sacred Heart Hospital and volunteered with Emerald Coast Hospice and Food for Thought of Walton County. Caroline completed her Master’s as Freeport Elementary’s school social worker, where she created and facilitated a children’s grief group for students in grades 1-4.
Caroline met Shayne in Nashville, TN in 2006. They spent 10 more years together, working and living in various parts of the country and starting a family with their two daughters, now in 7th and 5th grade. For Caroline, becoming a board member for Hope for Widows is an important activation in becoming a supportive agent of advocacy and change for the grieving and widowed. She is motivated by work that invites and involves the many working parts of her history and self but that is beyond her own grief and collectively impactful to the widowed community worldwide. She is hopeful this opportunity to serve this specific population can bridge her lived experience as a widowed person and the trauma-informed, clinical social work education and experience she has received since becoming widowed.
Caroline taught herself macramé and the ukulele since becoming a widow and also loves to sing, paint, and lean into the creative as a pathway to self-soothe and make progress through grief. She most enjoys nature and hiking with her daughters and partner, traveling, sunsets at the beach, cooking and baking, and most of all connecting with people who have the heart to hold nuance and the complexities of grief.