TrueWorks, 5300 Main Street, Houston, TX (2026)

04/12/2024

TrueWorks launched The Houston Challenge this past October and are excited to announce the winners – helpers in our city who we will be helping as a result!

Meet Good Works Collective (.collective). Co-founders David Ten Have and Jack Swink are at the helm of this new non-profit. Their stories intersected while serving others in addiction recovery in Houston – where they witnessed the gospel at work in sobriety, physical healing and unified families. However, they noted that there was one aspect of life residents still struggled with across the board – finding meaningful work.

Through discovering a group in Denver, the pieces of what has become Good Works Collective, came together. This new Houston non-profit aims to cultivate people in financially underserved communities to dream again through community and career leadership training. They are teaching soft and hard skills so students can launch into careers with earnings above the poverty line and opportunities for upward mobility.

As the winners of the Houston Challenge, Good Works Collective is receiving a suite of services from our TrueWorks community, starting with:

- A Business Services Pack (policies, procedures, tech stack recommendations)
- Redemptive Business Lab attendance for our lab in the Fall of 2024, followed up by an Organizational Health Check
- A Visual Identity and Messaging Guide and Pitch Deck from our friends at Yellowbox Creative and Solace Media- Coaching Strategy Formulation from the TW Leadership Team and Board- $25,000 cash prize

Congratulations to our friends at Good Works Collective on being this year’s Houston Challenge winners!

Next week we’ll share with you about our Redemptive Business Labs, developed by Praxis and taught by the TrueWorks team. You’ll get a great glimpse into one of the services that Good Works Collective will be experiencing this coming fall.

03/09/2024

The TrueWorks Board and staff gathered this weekend in Galveston for their first annual retreat. It’s been a beautiful time of sharing, hearing more of each other’s stories and visioning for the future. Grateful for each board member and the gifts they bring.

01/25/2024

January has had this team up and moving through two Fellows retreats, numerous speaking engagements and lots of planning for the Spring.

It has also been bittersweet as we have had to send good wishes along with our dear colleague, Joshua Smith. Joshua finishes his PhD in May at Rice and is laying the groundwork for the next thing for he and his family. As he does so, he is taking the time to calibrate and get ready for what is around the corner with the completion of his degree.

Joshua is an incredible teacher, who has spent the last couple of years refining and developing our teaching content - specifically for our H-Town Fellows program. He is in his element when he is teaching and facilitating and we’ve come to really enjoy seeing him flourish in this space.

Joshua is also a helper. Whenever we are in event mode he just shows up to help in any way needed. Rachel in particular has really been grateful for this. He’s been her fellow “schlepper” as the team has put on various programs. He’s become skilled at window clings and ironing backdrops. This is somewhat humorous, but Rachel is quite seriously grateful for his willingness to do even the most small and non-glamorous tasks.

Finally, he is beloved in our office for his kind smile and great humor. Beneath that we know he is thinking about hard and good things and the way that God is intersecting with the world around us - and he brings that deep care into the relationships around him.

Joshua - we will miss you in the day to day. We know you have worked hard on your schooling and in your work with us and we are praying for this next, new, beautiful chapter in your life!

-Your TW Family

12/20/2023

Merry Christmas from our TrueWorks Family to yours. It is our great hope that this beautiful concept we call “re-enchantment,”made possible by the One whom we celebrate this season, would become a part of your redemption story… and lead to Houston’s flourishing.

This is the beauty we are called to pursue daily.

May it capture your heart as well this Advent Season.

12/11/2023

H-Town Fellows Christmas Party 2023… we reflected on our OG class that started in 2017 with just 9 people, and are amazed at the 114 of us that are now a part of this beautiful journey of seeing our work as a part of the greater story of redemption. Architects, engineers, artists, supply chain and logistics leaders, professors, attorneys, real estate developers, physicians, dancers…. So many different professions and backgrounds - all seeking the flourishing of this city. We have so much to be thankful for.

A special thanks to Joy and Dade Dowdle for opening their beautiful home to us tonight. Their gracious gift of hospitality has fostered so many of our gatherings through the years.

And thank you to all of our Fellows cohorts. When we see all of you gathered and in community, we are all the more hopeful.

Happy Advent!

11/28/2023

When we are asked about our impact, we point to the people we help. We don’t solve the problem of the food desert in Houston’s Second Ward, but we support the people who can. We are not the people who develop systems to train more teachers for Texas, but we help and support the people who have the creativity and drive to meet this great need. WE HELP THE HELPERS. It’s our calling, the very thing we lean into every day.

When you give to TrueWorks this Giving Tuesday, you enable us to support the very people who are changing our city for the Good.

Click here to give: https://www.trueworkshouston.org/give

11/23/2023

Gratitude in abundance this Thanksgiving from our team to all of you who have been a part of our calling to re-enchant the workforce of our community. May you know the redemptive power of the One who is making all things new!

09/27/2023

What is enough? What can we do? How can we rise to the challenges our city faces? WHAT WILL THE CREATIVE ACTION OF CHRISTIANS BE IN OUR LIFETIME?

At TrueWorks Day, we’ll be launching the HOUSTON CHALLENGE and we are excited to share it with you!
Our plenary speaker, Dr. Ruth Lopez Turley (Director, Kinder Institute of Urban Research, Rice University) will be sharing Houston’s 5 Greatest Challenges to Citywide Flourishing.

TrueWorks is responding with THE HOUSTON CHALLENGE, which we will formally announce on October 20th at TrueWorks Day. An award of a cash grant and support services is awarded to the most creative and compelling response to Houston’s greatest challenges.

Which category might you or someone you know be in?

Ignite: If you have a new idea for a small business or non-profit and want to begin well and bring it to the market, this category is for you.
Innovate: If you're an established entity and have a new idea you want to introduce to the market, this category is for you.
Improve: If your business or non-profit is set up and you want to provide your service or product to your target customers more effectively, this category fits your needs.

Join us on October 20th when we launch The Houston Challenge! Register at https://www.trueworkshouston.org/trueworksday.

09/25/2023

Help us welcome our newest board member, Caroline Nakamura!

Caroline has a long career in consulting and Human Resources and recently joined Udemy as Senior Director, Total Rewards. In her role, she designs and manages compensation and employee benefit plan solutions for this growing global, publicly traded technology and learning company. Throughout her career, Caroline’s primary focus has been helping organizations deliver high-value, cost-effective programs to attract, retain, and engage talent at every stage of life, while tightly managing what is typically an organization’s largest investment. Prior to joining Udemy, Caroline oversaw the strategy, design, and delivery of employee programs at Crown Castle where she held a variety of leadership positions from 2017-2023.

Caroline began her career consulting for clients in the energy, technology, and healthcare industries. After moving from consulting to the corporate side, Caroline led, restructured, and repositioned several HR teams to be value-adding business partners. Other key projects Caroline has led include compensation and total rewards philosophy development, healthcare funding and cost mitigation strategies, HR modernization and automation solutions, risk identification and mitigation, and vendor management.

Caroline attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and obtained the designation of Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2018, she participated in the Main Street Fellows (now TrueWorks’ H-Town Fellows) and was involved in First Presbyterian’s church planting efforts from 2019-2022.

Caroline and her husband Brian have been married since 2012 and have been members of First Presbyterian Church of Houston since 2011. They have three children, Luke (9), Kate (7) and Ren (8) months.

We are so glad to have you on the team, Caroline!

09/17/2023

It’s been a busy but beautiful weekend for the TrueWorks family! We enjoyed another meet up of our Redemptive Business Lab cohort at Little Red Box Grocery and launched our H-Town Fellows 2023/24 class of 35 people. We are excited to jump into life together with all of these incredible people this fall…. And to see how all of these relationships help shape the future of our city and it’s flourishing!

09/14/2023

We long to see the people we are called to help – businesses, entrepreneurs, the workforce of our city – take what they encounter with us and use it to change the places they are each uniquely called to. That RIPPLE EFFECT is what we live for.

So join us as we celebrate all the ripples that go on to change our city at TrueWorks Day on Friday, October 20th. Maybe you’re looking for some encouragement, some insights or some new tools. Or maybe you are curious about the challenges Houston is facing and how you, in your corner of the city, can help affect change. Or maybe you’re a founder of a business and interested in hearing about the myriad of ways TrueWorks equips people just like you…

Come for the whole day or just dinner and the main session! We’d love to have you. Anyone and everyone is welcome! Register at www.trueworksday.com

09/07/2023

The TrueWorks team is a small but mighty group of bi-vocational people who are passionate about well formed people and well formed ventures - all of which we believe will help our city flourish.

Kate’s career in operations and logistics and her current role as mom to a toddler - inform her work with TW and are a part of her story as she leads the team on all things back office as well as on our consulting arm.

Doug’s career as an engineer who has lived all over the world and as an ordained minister, has given him a unique perspective when helping people understand their own unique callings in work.

Joshua, who is also a PhD student in Philosophy at Rice University, has found a unique connection between his doctoral work on human flourishing and TrueWorks’ H-Town Fellows course.

And Rachel, who was a founder herself and is currently the Managing Director of Live Events for a sports and entertainment agency in Houston, has a heart for other founders and their businesses as well as a passion for connecting them to the right resources.

As we launch our fall programming, we hope we are able to connect with many of you in the various spaces we find ourselves in as the TrueWorks team. Together, each of us understands what it means to be in the day-to-day of a career and all that entails.

Come see us at TrueWorks Day on October 20th! Or drop by the office for one of our Friday lunches!

TrueWorks

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