Linda Oberhaus among 2016 Gulfshore Life Men & Women of the Year
The Shelter is proud to announce that Executive Director Linda Oberhaus was named one of eight 2016 Men & Women of the Year recipients by Gulfshore Life Magazine. Other recipients include Maria Jimenez-Lara, CEO of the Naples Children and Education Foundation; Mark Loren, Jeweler and Owner of Mark Loren Designs; Ingrid and Fabrizio Aielli, Owner and Chef-Owner of Sea Salt and Barbatella; Abdul’Haq Muhammed, Founder and Executive Director of the Quality Life Center; Lizbeth Benacquisto, State Senator; Lydia Black, Executive Director of Alliance for The Arts, and Dr. David Perlmutter, Neurologist and Author.
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Linda Oberhaus
Executive Director of The Shelter
for Abused Women & Children
Growing up, there are the people (most of us) who flip-flop, change minds, switch majors, change careers before finally settling on their place in the world. And then there are people like Linda Oberhaus who seem to know, just as naturally as they know how to breathe, what they are meant to do.
“I feel I was born to be a social worker,” she says, sitting in her sunlit office at Naples’ Shelter for Abused Women & Children, where she’s been executive director since 2007.
Oberhaus was a peer counselor in high school. At 18—yes, 18—she was a volunteer rape crisis advocate, visiting traumatized women and girls in emergency rooms. “When I was 18, I felt worldly and I felt grown, but when I look back—I have a daughter around that age, and I can’t imagine her doing that.”
She went into community mental health after earning social work degrees from the University of South Florida, and then landed a job at a domestic violence shelter in Tampa, rising in the ranks until she became its executive. She’s been working in the domestic violence field ever since.
“It’s an amazing place,” she said of the Naples shelter. “We’re all about transformation and focusing on empowerment.”
One of Oberhaus’ early decisions was to expand the board of directors, creating strategic alliances with law enforcement, school officials and others in key positions to help victims. She grew its prevention programs, particularly the ‘Gentle’men Against Domestic Violence. She oversaw the construction of seven cottages where women can live for up to two years while they continue working toward independence.
“Transitional housing can make the difference between a woman getting out of a violent relationship and staying out or feeling like she has to return,” Oberhaus says. On average, women return to their abusers seven times before finally getting out.
Next up: The construction of a new shelter in Immokalee to serve victims of domestic abuse and human trafficking. Too many women, Oberhaus says, decline to seek shelter in Naples because it is too far away from jobs, schools and extended family. And, on the subject of human trafficking, Oberhaus says this promises to become one of her biggest areas of concentration. No longer are the majority of victims foreign women lured away from other countries; they are U.S. residents—teens and young women—seduced into trafficking rings.
Something surprising:
When I was 11, I broke my collarbone playing tackle football…with the boys.
Worse habit:
I’m a list person. I make a list every day, 7 days a week. I begin and end that day with that list.
Biggest influence:
My grandmother. I connected with her I guess around the age of 12… she became my best friend, my confidant, somebody I could really depend on. I can’t imagine how I would have navigated the world without her.
–Author, Jennifer Reed
