Experience Taught Us How to Respond.
Life Taught Us Why.
Heaven Sent Community Services & Veterans Assistance was built from lived experience, military and community service, decades of disaster-response experience, and a promise: if we made it through our own darkest days, we would spend our lives becoming the help we once needed.
Before There Was an Organization, There Was a Promise.
Heaven Sent did not begin in a boardroom or with a five-year plan. It grew from real life — from hospital rooms, frightening uncertainty, difficult days, unanswered questions, and knowing what it feels like when a family desperately needs somebody to show up.
Joe and Kim Ryan know what it feels like to be on the other side of the helping system. They know what it is like to search for answers, make calls, face uncertainty, and wonder whether somebody is going to help.
Those experiences did not become a marketing story. They became a commitment.
Joe and Kim made a promise that if they made it through their own difficult days, they would spend their lives trying to become the kind of help they once needed.
Heaven Sent Community Services & Veterans Assistance is that promise being put into action.
More Than 25 Years of Service, Response & Leadership
Joseph “Joe” Ryan, Founder & Executive Director of Heaven Sent and a U.S. Navy combat Veteran, brings more than 25 years of disaster-response, emergency-service, nonprofit and community-service experience.
His experience spans military service, emergency communications, disaster operations, technology, administration, volunteer coordination, search and rescue, emergency medical response, mass care, emergency feeding, instruction and nonprofit leadership.
U.S. Navy Combat Veteran
Joe's foundation of service includes military service as a U.S. Navy combat Veteran — experience that helped shape a lifelong commitment to service, preparedness and helping others.
Founding Director — REACT of Schuylkill County
Joe served as a Founding Director of REACT of Schuylkill County, adding emergency communications and community-response leadership to his developing public-service background.
Emergency Communications
Joe is a General Class amateur radio operator and has extensive experience involving emergency and disaster communications. His background also included helping develop an auxiliary communications plan for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA).
Search & Rescue Leadership
Joe served as a Search and Rescue Manager with Middle Creek Search and Rescue, adding field coordination and search-and-rescue operations to his emergency-response experience.
Volunteer Fire Service & EMT Experience
Joe also served as a volunteer firefighter with Good Intent Fire Company No. 551 in New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and served as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), adding direct fire-service and emergency-medical-response experience.
American Red Cross Disaster Services
Joe's American Red Cross experience included responsibilities in Staff Services management, Disaster Services Technology management, administration, in-kind donations, disaster-services coordination at the Schuylkill County Chapter, and instruction.
He also served as a Job Director on four disaster-response operations, providing experience in the coordination of people, resources and field operations during disaster response.
CARE
Mass Care & Emergency Feeding
Joe's background also includes work as a Mass Care Kitchen Instructor, Board of Health certifications, Sysco kitchen certification and service as a Sysco Kitchen Instructor.
This experience contributed practical knowledge of food safety, mass-care operations and organized feeding during emergency and community-relief operations.
FEMA-Related Training, Instruction & Disaster Operations
Joe's disaster background also includes extensive FEMA-related training, instruction and field experience across multiple disciplines of emergency and disaster operations.
Detailed FEMA certifications and course credentials are maintained as part of the organization's leadership-capacity documentation.
Founding Director — MDR Disaster Relief & Veterans Outreach
Joe later served as a Founding Director of MDR Disaster Relief and Veterans Outreach, continuing his work in disaster relief, Veterans outreach and community response before founding and leading Heaven Sent.
Experience Across the Response System
Heaven Sent's leadership experience was not developed in only one discipline. It crosses many of the functions that become important when people, families and entire communities face crisis.
Heaven Sent Brought Experienced People Together.
Heaven Sent's capacity does not rest on one person. Its leadership brings experience from disaster response, military service, emergency management, healthcare and nursing, public health, Veterans services, homelessness, business management, intelligence, pastoral care, education, instruction and direct community service.
Joseph “Joe” Ryan
Joe brings more than 25 years of experience spanning disaster response, military and community service, Red Cross disaster services, emergency communications, search and rescue, fire service, EMT experience, mass care, technology, instruction, nonprofit leadership and field operations.
Read Joe's Full BiographyTim Lehman
Tim brings substantial emergency-management and public-service experience, including experience with PEMA, search and rescue, service in both the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army, and emergency medical services. Tim is also a currently licensed EMT.
His experience strengthens Heaven Sent's preparedness, field-operations and disaster-response capacity.
Read Tim's Full BiographyDarrell Whited
Darrell brings extensive Veteran-service, community-service, training and leadership experience to Heaven Sent. His history includes years of work supporting Veterans and communities, including experience associated with Vets Working.
Darrell and Teresa's service through Vets Working reaches back to 2014, adding another independent line of service experience that predates Heaven Sent.
Read Darrell's Full BiographyTeresa Whited
Teresa brings advanced nursing education, public-health experience, instructional experience, faith and community-service experience to the Heaven Sent leadership team.
Her background includes a Doctor of Nursing education, CDC-related experience, instructional work and years of service associated with Vets Working.
Healthcare expertise represented within leadership does not mean that Heaven Sent independently provides medical treatment. Specialized clinical services are coordinated with appropriately qualified providers when needed.
Read Teresa's Full BiographyNorm
Norm brings military counterintelligence experience together with substantial private-sector management experience, including experience operating four businesses.
That combination contributes additional organizational, operational, planning and business perspective to Heaven Sent's leadership capacity.
Read Norm's Full BiographyPaul Kinebrew
Paul contributes direct experience and perspective to Heaven Sent's work with people experiencing homelessness. His role helps keep outreach and casework connected to the realities people face while trying to move from crisis toward stability.
Read Paul's Full BiographyDifferent Roads. One Mission.
The strength of Heaven Sent is not that every leader has the same background. It is that different people bring different kinds of experience to the same mission. Together, those perspectives help Heaven Sent look at crisis as a whole-person problem rather than a single-program problem.
From Crisis Toward Stability
Heaven Sent serves Veterans, people experiencing homelessness, working and vehicular homeless households, seniors, people with disabilities, families and neighbors facing crisis. Our approach begins with listening, understanding the barriers and helping connect people with responsible next steps.
Street & Community Outreach
Meeting people where they are, listening first and identifying immediate barriers and appropriate next steps.
Casework & Navigation
Helping people understand systems, gather information, identify resources and connect with appropriate programs and providers.
Veterans Support
Community-based outreach, navigation, referral, follow-up and connection with appropriate Veteran and VA-related resources.
Seniors & Disability Support
Navigation and community support focused on dignity, accessibility, independence and stability.
Disaster Relief
Preparedness, community response, mass-care experience, communications and recovery-minded support.
Families in Crisis
Helping families identify barriers, navigate resources and connect with qualified community programs and providers.
Safe Harbor
Years of responding to individual crises led Heaven Sent to a larger question: what if more of the pieces people need to move forward could be connected through one coordinated community?
That question became the vision for Safe Harbor — a planned integrated campus model intended to bring housing, workforce development, community support, disaster preparedness and pathways toward long-term stability together.
Heaven Sent goes to the people.
Safe Harbor gives people a place to move forward.
Housing
Planned affordable and accessible housing components designed around different household and accessibility needs.
Workforce Development
Planned education, hands-on training and workforce-development pathways designed to support employment and greater independence.
Disaster Readiness
Planned disaster-response, communications, mass-care, preparedness and community-resilience capacity.
Community Support
Planned space for navigation, casework, partner coordination and connections to appropriate community resources.
Transportation & Mobility
Planned transportation and mobility strategies intended to help reduce barriers to services, employment and community connection.
Dignity & Independence
A development philosophy centered on treating people as people while building practical pathways toward greater stability.
People Helping People — Because We All Matter.
We cannot promise that every answer will be yes. We cannot promise that every program will have an opening or that every barrier can be solved immediately.
What we can do is treat the person asking for help with dignity, listen carefully, work within our role, identify responsible options and keep looking for the next appropriate step.
That is the organization Joe and Kim's promise helped create. That is the experience our leadership team brings to the mission. And that is the foundation on which Heaven Sent intends to keep building.
Joseph “Joe” Ryan
Founder & Executive Director
Heaven Sent Community Services & Veterans Assistance
Office:
(407) 279-0520
Cell:
(717) 623-0164
Email:
joepres@heaven-sent-veterans-outreach.org