Q&A: Kathy’s House CEO wants all guests to know ‘this is their home’

Mar 20, 2025 3:03 pm

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Kim Lamansky For Kim Lamansky, forming meaningful connections with guests at Kathy’s House is central to the organization’s mission. Lamansky is one year into her role as chief executive officer of Kathy’s House, a hospital guest house and nonprofit based in Wauwatosa. After previously serving as executive director of Tri City

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Kim Lamansky[/caption] For Kim Lamansky, forming meaningful connections with guests at Kathy’s House is central to the organization’s mission. Lamansky is one year into her role as chief executive officer of Kathy’s House, a hospital guest house and nonprofit based in Wauwatosa. After previously serving as executive director of Tri City Health Partnership, a free medical and dental clinic in St. Charles, Illinois, Lamansky succeeded former Kathy’s House CEO Patty Metropulos. Kathy’s House provides affordable lodging and support for patients and families who travel to Milwaukee for medical care. Of the approximately 1,500 guests the nonprofit serves each year, about 70% live in Wisconsin and 10% cannot afford to pay. Kathy’s House operates on a sliding scale, so patients and families are not turned away if they are unable to pay. Later this spring, Kathy’s House will host its Casino Night Gala on May 17 at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee. BizTimes reporter Samantha Dietel spoke with Lamansky about her experience leading Kathy’s House so far, her priorities going forward and how the business community can get involved. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. BizTimes: What does your day-to-day look like as CEO of Kathy’s House? Lamansky: “It changes. It could be everything from having coffee with a guest who just happens to be making breakfast in the morning, which is always a lovely part of my day. Working with our board of directors some days. Staff meetings, working with a lot of the staff. In a large facility like this, it could be working with the maintenance man on the new washer dryer, so depending on not even the day, depending on the hour. Today, I have six meetings that range the gamut of all of that, so it changes.” What would you say have been your biggest accomplishments throughout your first year as CEO? “Learning not only the mission but understanding it. It’s easy to learn how to say the mission but really understand what we do and why we do it has been something that I’ve taken very seriously. Working with Froedtert and MCW, trying to give as many tours to really build that relationship up, I think, is vital, and that’s been going really well as well. Getting to know the board of directors, I would say I’m pretty proud that they seem to be ‘Team Kim,’ so that’s always great. My predecessor was here for 12 years, and that’s some big shoes to fill. But I think my biggest accomplishment I’m the most proud of, is really, truly getting a good handle and understanding of our guests and what their needs are and why they’re with us.” Can you tell me more about the guests and their needs? “One of the things that a lot of people may not know is that our guests that stay with us are a combo platter of the caregiver that is here as well as the patient. It’s about 50% sometimes our patients are still in the hospital, so we have just the caregiver. It’s challenging for them to be having to come home from the hospital every day and leave their loved one there at night. They’re struggling with a lot of stress and trying to navigate the medical system. I think for us, it’s really understanding that they are going to have good days and bad days at the hospital, their news they’re going to hear is going to be good and bad. If we have the guests staying with us, making sure that we have quiet spaces for them, not only in their room, but throughout the building. Really just trying to make sure that when they’re here, they know that we want it to be as close to home life for them. When you’ve been at the hospital all day dealing with a chemo treatment and it’s your second week of chemo, you’re not going to be wanting to sit and chat and talk to the CEO, but your caregiver might. They might be really struggling with their loved one dealing with that. It really is getting to know our guests and what they need, whether it is to chat with me, our staff, each other, or do they need to be left alone? And sometimes people just need to have some place to go where they can shut the door, have a good cry, or just turn on TV and completely lock it all out for a while. It’s really getting to know what they need to navigate their journey.” What was your perspective of Kathy’s House and its mission before you joined the organization? “I really think that when I was learning about it, when I was interviewing, I understood the idea of what Kathy’s House was as a whole. I got it. But I think what I’ve learned that’s different is it’s not like people come in and they go into their room (and) we never see them. We have this wonderful community base where there’s four working kitchens. We’ve got this community-based dining area. There are seating areas where you can really, truly have in-depth conversations. You’re really, truly living with each other. And for our guests, it really makes a difference when they’re able to talk to someone who’s going through something just as similar. When I first came on, I thought we had a house, they all stayed in the room, and we did our business. And that’s not it at all. We interact with our guests all day, every day, including weekends. We have people that are here on the weekends so that they’re never alone. And I think that’s really been the biggest eye opener for me, is realizing that our guests are what drive what we do, and their needs, really, really truly do come first.” How have you personally connected with guests at Kathy’s House? “When I first started, I was so excited to have office space where I could have a coffee maker, and I had my coffee bar that I created. I was so excited to have that, and I learned within the first week that I needed to go out into the house and have coffee out there and really connect with the guests. And that’s really where you spend a lot of it. People always say that you can connect over whether it’s having coffee together or eating lunch. When I see somebody sitting out there, whether they’re having their breakfast or they’re getting ready for their dinner with a bunch of groups that are coming in to serve it — sitting down, saying hello, they’re always welcome. Everybody’s got a smile. They always look up. So you know that you’re wanted, you’re welcome to come in and have those conversations with them. I will say my staff does an incredible job of reading our guests. So if they know that someone is going in for testing today, or they’re going to get news about their treatment and their plan, when the guest walks in, they can look at the guests and get a good feel if they had good news or bad news. Our staff is able to then adapt and offer more comfort or support if they need that, just by paying attention to what our guests are going through.” Have you had an interaction with a guest that resonated with you and has stuck with you? “We had a guest who, his husband was in a horrific car accident, and the partner was sleeping in a chair in the hospital while his partner was in traction, and just going through such a horrific, horrific time at the hospital. When he had heard about Kathy’s House — he heard about Kathy’s House from another guest that was over at the hospital, they were chatting — he called over. We did have space available. What he said to me was that walking into Kathy’s House was like the first time he’d ever seen the Wizard of Oz, and you go from the black and white to color, and how it really, truly opens up your eyes, and you’re able to get out of that negativity of the hospital and sleeping on the floor and walking into a place where people know your name and they say hello. That reference to the color of the Wizard of Oz has struck me and stayed with me ever since.” Why is it so meaningful to connect with guests? “I don’t think that we could fulfill our mission if we didn’t connect with them. A big part of our mission is to be a compassionate, caring place. It really, truly does come down to knowing who they are as people. We have birthday cards. We know when it’s their birthday. The staff sends out birthday cards to that guest. If they know that their grandchild is coming up for Easter, we’ll have an Easter egg hunt planned. We know who our guests are. We’re going to help them as much as we can outside of that medical field that they’re dealing with every day. This is really, truly connecting with them on a human level, and understanding that what they’re going through we can’t begin to understand. All we can do is have a warm place, some hot food for them and an ear to listen to. If we didn’t do that, Kathy’s House would just be a hotel, and that is absolutely not who we are (or) what we do.” What changes have you implemented since joining the organization? “My predecessor did such a wonderful job here. I really, truly stepped into big, big shoes here. But for me, connecting with the staff has been important, the weekly staff meetings and trying to get everyone on the same page with our mission and our values and our purpose. Right now, we’re in the middle of a strategic planning process, and that’s going to be the biggest change I think that’s going to happen is the new strategic plan guiding us on what our next phase is going to be like. We are always at capacity, and so trying to find innovative ways to help our guests when we might have a waiting list, so we’re looking at other options on how we can provide another option for them. The strategic plan is really going to guide the next year, I think the next three to five.” What are your priorities or goals going forward? “Outside of the strategic plan, I think the biggest one is, internally, I have been working diligently with the staff on making sure that they have everything that they need to be successful. I want to make sure that everyone that walks in the door knows that this is their home. As far as the guests go, the biggest thing that I want to know is — we send out (questionnaires) — how was your stay? What can we do to make it better? Having those conversations are real. It’s not just lip service to say that. We really, truly want to know, what do you need to have a successful time while you’re here? Listening to those guests and implementing those questionnaires into our daily practice really happens. It’s not just that we hear it and we move on. I think that’s really important to listen to what our guests need and do our best to fulfill that.” How can Milwaukee’s business community get involved with or support Kathy’s House? “One of the best things that our guests will tell us is the fact that several nights a week we will have meals prepared that are here. When they’ve been at the hospital all day long, they’ll get a text that says, ‘lasagna is being served at five o’clock,’ so they’re able to come here and have a hot, warm, home cooked meal. Or there’s bag lunches. A lot of times different people will prepare bagged lunches they can grab and go on their way to the hospital. The business community and the Milwaukee community is such a wonderful giving community. Having more of those volunteer opportunities to have a — your staff might want to do a Day of Caring for something. You guys could prepare a meal, and you come here and you serve it. It could be pizza, it could be tacos, it could be anything. But giving back to those in need, especially with food, is a wonderful way for the Milwaukee community to help.” How much of Kathy’s House’s funding comes from private philanthropy? “We do not receive any Medicaid. We don’t get any Medicare, we don’t bill anybody. We don’t get any insurance. We don’t get any state or federal funding. Everything we do is through donations, grants and fundraisers. Our guests pay what they can, and the rest of that is made up through grants that we write and donations. The bulk of the money we receive is through individual donations. By not getting any federal or state funding, relying on the community, relying on those that care and understand the travel expenses, travel out of state for some people, and stay for six weeks at a time. They offset those costs in a way that we can never do without them.”

Q&A: Kathy’s House CEO wants all guests to know ‘this is their home’

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