Humans of NHC: Meet Martha Ryan at Homeless Prenatal Program!

Martha Ryan (she/her) is the Founder and Executive Director of Homeless Prenatal Program in San Francisco.

Q: What does a typical day in the life of your job look like? 

A: "It’s varied… It’s a lot of meetings. And the focus is many different things. It can be government stuff. It can be client needs. It can be fundraising. It can be staff related. So the day in the life is varied, but I guess most of my focus is always the Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP)."

Q: What initially interested you about your career path/profession? 

A: “I spent time in the PeaceCorps. When I was there, I taught English to kids who walked an hour or two to school. And in the end of the two years after being in the Peace Corps, I asked myself what did you give and what did you get. And what I gave and what I got was just unbalanced. But I wanted to have that life experience again. I loved living in this foreign country. I loved living without – it didn’t matter that I didn’t have electricity or running water. We made do. Nobody had it. And I just loved the people that we were with. And I loved teaching. And so I wanted to come back but I wanted to be able to give something more valuable. And that’s when I decided to become a nurse. 

So I came back and became a nurse and then I went back to Africa and worked in refugee camps. I was right back in my element again. It was in those camps that I learned models of some of the work we do here: by training women in the camps to be the link to people who we were there to serve. I thought why can’t we do that here. My whole vision for myself was to come back and I became a NP and then I got a masters in public health. I wanted to set up a maternal and child health program in a lower-income country, but I realized that in America, my own backyard, the homelessness issue needed addressing too.”

Q: What was the moment that you realized this profession was for you?

A: “The Community Health Workers  program was always my favorite part of the program. Having the seed being planted when I was in refugee camps. In those camps we chose women to be the link to the people we were there to serve. We invested in them. We supported them. These women were fantastic. And women in that part of the world and in many parts of the world have the lowest place in society based solely on their gender. And we saw them rise as leaders. We did it in Somalia and Sudan. In Sudan, we had 4 epidemics in the 6 months that I was there. And we were able to control those epidemics by these women, not by us. If it weren’t for these women, we could have never vaccinated that many individuals. 55,000 vaccinations in 7 days. They were revered by their communities and by the leaders who were men in their camps. Seeing them rise as leaders was just so great and that was a gift to us and to them as well to be able to have that recognition.”

Q: What/Who inspires you? Why?

A: “Well the people here inspire me. The clients inspire me. The staff inspires me. People say to me, ‘Look what you’ve done.’ And I say, ‘It’s not me. No one person could ever do this on their own.’ And I think that’s really important too. So I’ve been inspired by the people around me. They told me what to do. And I was just lucky to have the vision to listen. And to try to implement what they said people need. And I knew they knew better than I. Because they came from that place. They had that life experience. And I knew they were smart. In many cases smarter than I. It’s been a privilege for sure.”

Q: What was one of the most discouraging moments that you can remember and how did you deal with the situation?

A: “At one point in time we almost became homeless as an organization. We almost lost our space, but luckily we were able to keep it. And one of the reasons was because I had a relationship with the owner of the building. I was nice to him. I was honest. And he never asked us to move out 

There were other things that happened. We had people die. Not our clients so much. Though we did lose clients as well. Clients who became staff then had AIDS and then died. And those were hard things too.”

Q: What advice do you have for people who are just beginning their journeys towards their careers.

A: “I’m not so sure I really had a plan for me. I just kept going on this journey on this path that was provided for me. And I feel grateful. So I just say follow your path. I was lucky and the choices I made turned out to be the right choices. But we don’t know in life if they really are going to be the right choices. So you just got to stay on it. And just trust in yourself and trust in your gut and trust in the vision you have for yourself, for what you want to do. And you’ll do it. You’ll do great things.”