Meet the Team
While Greater Des Moines Supportive Housing is a new organization, the founding team has many decades of experience in homeless services, housing programs, and nonprofit management. The founding team includes:
Emily Osweiler, MSW
Emily helped lead the efforts to build and launch the YMCA Supportive Housing Campus in Des Moines in 2011. She helped plan the design of the facility with architects, developed resident-centered programming, and managed the low-income tax credits. Emily has 18 years of nonprofit experience and more than a decade of experience in board development and management, fundraising, cultivating strategic partnerships, and around social work issues of homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness, trauma, veteran’s needs, extreme poverty, mindfulness, and more.
Emily’s deep commitment to the community is evident in the way she spends her time. She serves on the Plymouth Place Board of Directors and is a past Director for Community Choice Credit Union, a past member and current volunteer for the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute, a member of the Board of an animal rescue called Inner Light Sanctuary, a member of a Giving Program Board through Kinship Brewery and is active in her church and her children’s activities. Emily was named one of the Des Moines Business Record’s 40 Under 40 leaders in 2020.
Sarah Wigen
Sarah spent several years at the YMCA Healthy
Living Center coaching and training members, volunteers,
and staff. She often worked with people going through
life-changing journeys of extreme weight loss, cancer
diagnoses, grief, and more. She was recruited to the YMCA
Supportive Housing Campus where she built, led, and
managed an entirely new department: Community
Engagement. It grew exponentially as she added two staff
members and hundreds of volunteers. This spurred a growing donor base that propelled new programming for residents, which Sarah called “promises of home.” Sarah managed the social media presence, volunteer recognition, and donor stewardship programming.
Carol Luth
Carol has over 30 years of experience in the nonprofit world and has worked in the mental health, corrections, older adult, and adult education arenas as a direct service provider, program developer, and manager. Carol has over 15 years of experience in grant writing and management, including recent employment with Mercy Foundation of Des Moines and the YMCA of Greater Des Moines.
