Like many Chattanoogans, Katheryn Geter looks in a mirror before going to work to make sure she’s presentable. But as she steps away from her reflection and ventures into the community outside her home, she continues to see herself gazing back.
Geter, 48, sees homes that have aged like the people living in them, she says. She notes how these inadequate shelters fail to safeguard the health and well-being of the residents. And she recognizes all too well the pleading expressions on the faces of people she encounters because she once saw those same articulations of need when she looked in a mirror.
“I was a young mother of two boys, the oldest of which is intellectually disabled,” Geter recalls. “I experienced what it’s like to apply for food stamps, to need better housing and to wrestle with the health care system. So when people talk about accessing social services in Chattanooga, I lived that.”
Many people know Geter as a former commissioner of District 5 in Hamilton County. But she stepped down from that role last August after serving a single four-year term and is now the – she takes a deeper than usual breath before saying it – “Orchard Knob connected communities project manager.”
Despite consisting of a bountiful word salad, Geter’s job title only touches on what she does and who she engages.
Geter’s employer is The Enterprise Center, an economic development agency in Chattanooga. The center is one of the stakeholders in the Orchard Knob Collaborative, a community-led organization that aims to address the issues the 1,500 or so people who live in the 188-year-old East Chattanooga community identify.
The Collaborative was birthed out of a partnership between the Orchard Knob Neighborhood Association and Parkridge Health Systems in 2019 and has grown to include several community stakeholders that work with the residents of the neighborhood to address key issues.
In addition to Parkridge and The Enterprise Center, the partners include EPB, Habitat for Humanity, the OK Neighborhood Watch Association, green | spaces and Design Studios.
Geter refers to these entities as “stakeholders” because of their interest in seeing Orchard Knob thrive. Parkridge Medical Center, for example, marks one corner of a rectangle of streets that form the boundaries of the community, which extends down McCallie Avenue to The Refindery, travels right to Speedway on East Third Street and then right again to the KFC.
Like many African American communities, Geter says diabetes tends to prosper within these boundaries, where there’s no immediate access to a grocery store that sells healthy food. As a stakeholder in the Orchard Knob community, Parkridge has a reason to help change that, Geter explains.
“People go to Parkridge to be treated but they go home to heal. You need to make sure the community has what it needs at home to be healthy or the same people will continue to come in to be treated.”
The Orchard Knob stakeholders provide services that form a web of social care. The Enterprise Center, for example, teaches residents how to use the internet through its Tech Goes Home digital inclusion program and offers low-cost hardware that connects them to EPB-installed Wi-Fi hot spots. These portals in turn allow the users to access free telehealth sessions at Parkridge.
“Even though Chattanooga has the fastest internet speeds available, more than a third of the residents of Orchard Knob did not have in-home online access,” notes Gabrielle Chevalier, the marketing and communications for The Enterprise Center. “So we stepped in to help address that disparity.”
The Enterprise Center and the other stakeholders didn’t gallop into Orchard Knob like knights on mighty steeds. Rather, they listened as the residents of the community expressed their needs.
That’s still the case today, Chevalier says.
“It’s the Orchard Knob community telling Habitat for Humanity that the agency’s price points for housing and income restrictions is preventing their neighborhood from benefiting from the program and asking them to modify their guidelines. And it’s the stakeholders listening to them rather than going into the community and declaring, ‘Here’s what you need and here’s what we’re going to give you.’”
After more than 20 years of social services work, Geter has become a good listener, she contends, which should work in the community’s favor as she coordinates the work being done there.
“I used to think, ‘Lord, I should have been a counselor,’” Geter laughs. “I was sitting and listening to people all day. They’d say, ‘Ms. Geter, I done shared my life story with you, and you’re supposed to be signing me up for health insurance.’ But I listened, which is what I’ll be doing as the project manager for Orchard Knob. I’ll be listening to their needs.”
Listening will facilitate what Geter says is one of the most crucial responsibilities she has: forming and nurturing relationships.
“Relationships are the new currency,” she muses. “If I can’t maintain and build on the relationships Orchard Knob and the stakeholders already have, then I shouldn’t be at the table.”
Geter has been eyeing a seat at the table since moving from Italy to Chattanooga when she was a middle schooler. Her parents served in the U.S. military overseas, and after the family broke apart, Geter’s mother brought her to Chattanooga.
Geter says she didn’t encounter any social disparities between races while living in Europe; therefore, she didn’t experience any of the realities of being Black in the U.S. Moving to Chattanooga was eye-opening, she adds.
“While living overseas, I didn’t feel like I was different because of the color of my skin or socioeconomic status. I didn’t know there was a difference between the races until we moved here.”
The experience jarred Geter’s perspective and infused her with a passion for helping people, she continues. She initially planned to become a nurse but switched to social services and earned a Master of Public Management degree with a concentration in nonprofit management at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“I knew my calling was to help people but I didn’t know I needed to focus on marginalized and underserved communities until I moved to Chattanooga,” Geter says.
Geter spent the next 20 years connecting people with resources and services, first as a public housing coordinator for Partnership for Families, Children and Adults, then as a State Health Insurance Assistance Program coordinator for the Area Agency on Aging and Disability.
After working as an Affordale Care Act program manager, first with Erlanger in Chattanooga and then with Family and Children’s Service in Nashville, she decided to vie for a seat on the Hamilton County Commission.
“I’d become passionate about community health and health care equity, and had started to look at those issues on a policy level,” she explains.
This was Geter’s 10-second elevator pitch to voters. When she piqued someone’s interest and they pressed her for more, she opened the floodgates that held back the rough waters she treaded for decades.
“When I considered how our local government impacted the way I paid my bills, how I accessed health care services as a single mother of an intellectually disabled son, and my ability to own a home, I didn’t like the answers,” she recalls.
After securing a seat on the council, Geter often told her colleagues they’d be amazed if they knew her truth. “When we debated policies, it was like we were discussing my reality,” she says.
Geter took the role with a wish list of policy suggestions she says never came to fruition. But she stiffens her posture and says she’s proud of her service on the commission because she was accessible to the people she represented and she served with integrity.
“Serving in the commission was hard. But the thing that allows me to lay my head on my pillow at night in peace is I walked away with my good name and people said they felt like they could connect with me.”
As program coordinator for Orchard Knob, Geter will serve as boots on the ground rather than an elected official in a seat, which will be a good use of her talents and experience, says Chevalier.
“We want Katherlyn to use her amazing background to open doors for people. She’s not only able to do that but she’s also relatable. She’s been where these people are and she knows it’s hard and she understands the importance of working together to find solutions.”
Geter also understands her life no longer looks like the lives of the people who live in Orchard Knob. Through her own resolve, and with the support of her family and friends, she says she’s living “a blessed life.” But she’s thankful for “the valleys” she’s walked through, she says, because they taught her how to advocate for people who aren’t as fortunate as she is.
“The path I walked was a blessing, too, because it will allow me to go into a community like Orchard Knob, listen to the people there and join arms with them as we work to make things better,” she says. “Someday, they’ll tell people, ‘You’d be amazed if you knew my truth.’”