Rogers-Lowell Area News

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas Announces New Executive Director

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas announced Tami Shaver has been named executive director of the nonprofit devoted to providing one-on-one mentoring to children in the community.

Shaver, originally from Minnesota, has worked for Big Brothers Big Sisters for the past 15 years. She joined the Northwest Arkansas affiliation 10 years ago. For the past three-and-a-half years, Shaver has worked as the Program Director at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas. During her tenure as Program Director, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas has served 54 percent more children, expanded partnerships with the University of Arkansas, juvenile justice programs, schools and other child serving organizations.

“One of the things I’ve strived for since coming to our agency, is to better serve the Spanish-speaking population in Northwest Arkansas. In the last two years, we’ve hired three culturally competent, Spanish-speaking program staff members, which has helped us to finally serve children with parents who do not speak English.” Reaching out to the LatinX community is not Shaver’s only focus. Shaver says, “Internally, I’ve focused on getting our teams to learn more about poverty, race, LGBTQ+, mental health and developmental disabilities, so that we can better serve our community as a whole. These efforts have paid off and we now have other area nonprofits coming to us for advice.”

About Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping all children achieve success in life by facilitating one-to-one mentoring relationships between caring adults and children. Trained professionals recruit, screen, match and support Big and Little Brothers and Sisters. For 24 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Arkansas has been working in the region to match children with mentors.