The Boothbay Region Community Resource Council welcomed its new executive director, Katie Spencer White, April 25. Boothbay Harbor Congregational Church hosted the meet and greet, a breakfast, as members and friends of the BRCRC mingled and introduced themselves to White.

“The growth of this organization has been dynamic,” said BRCRC Vice President Scott Larson as he introduced White. “It’s been fast and furious … (and) it became quickly apparent that it was going to need someone to lead it. We were very fortunate to find Katie.”

White introduced herself and launched into her journey of how a girl from San Jose, California came to find herself in Boothbay Harbor, a town she had never heard of. As San Jose quickly morphed from a working class region into Silicon Valley, White’s family decided to move to the East Coast.

“When I got to the East Coast, I said I’ve got to figure out how to get to Maine. It took me 25 years …”

In that time, White taught high school history in Baltimore, earned a law degree and practiced charities and education law in the United Kingdom, and met her husband, an Englishman, Lee White, while living abroad for 11 years in his hometown, Stoke-on-Trent. She worked as an executive director for a children and families organization in the UK, then became chief partnership officer for Charlottesville, Virginia’s branch of Habitat for Humanity. The couple started their own nonprofit involving environmental sustainability issues.

White said she and her husband always dreamed of living in Maine, so every now and again, she would browse job listings in Maine just to see if anything caught her eye. Boothbay Harbor and its Community Resource Council did.

“It was literally a message in a bottle. I saw an ad for a place I’d never heard of in Maine … It met every one of my expectations. I applied figuring nothing would come of it because I’m from away and I have no connection to Maine other than really wanting to live here … But it all worked out in the end.”

White has now been in Boothbay Harbor six weeks. Her husband is still back in Charlottesville packing up the rest of their belongings. Thankful for the opportunity to speak to more people face to face, White said besides living in what she considers one of the world’s three most beautiful places, the mission and purpose of BRCRC is her main reason for being here. She called the BRCRC is tremendously well resourced.

“(We’ve) got incredible program leads, people who’ve got such tremendous spirit and energy and are so mission driven – people who are ready to roll up their sleeves and just do the work. This is a community of people who say, ‘Tell me what I can do.’”

White likened the council’s help and outreach to the overhead warning before boarding a traincar on the London Underground – “Mind the gap.” White said our lives have many gaps. She pointed out a few moments in her life she needed the compassion and help of others, and thrived because she received it.

“BRCRC is that for people in this community. When people call the community navigator office and say ‘I don’t know what to do,’ they’ll say, ‘Don’t worry – we’ve got you.’”