Four individuals who sought help from S.F.-based Jewish Vocational Service and became business success stories will be honored at the 19th annual Strictly Business luncheon April 11 in San Francisco.
The Employee of the Year Award recipients are Rhea Spate, a former drug user who won an internship and then a job at UCSF through a JVS training program; Charles Jackson, who fled Liberia, turned to JVS for help rebuilding his life and now assists former refugees at African Advocacy Network; Jackson Soderquist Steel, a teenager with Down syndrome who took JVS skill-building courses and was hired by the Exploratorium; and Robert Milles, who found support at the JVS after a period of homelessness, earned his high school degree and got a full-time job at the Haight Ashbury Food Program.
A business leadership award will be given to San Francisco’s Friends of the Urban Forest, which has offered jobs and internships to high school–age JVS clients with disabilities.
The luncheon will be from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. April 11 at the Marriott Marquis, 55 Fourth St., S.F. For information, visit www.jvs.org.