By Danielle Capalbo

When the Home for Little Wanderers, a local non-profit child welfare agency, asked Joan Wallace-Benjamin to consider filling the position of president, she was shocked.

The Wellesley College graduate and member of the Northeastern University Corporation, a group that elects Northeastern’s board of trustees, was distinctly qualified for the position – it just wasn’t the job for which she applied.

“I got introduced to The Home basically [applying to be a] search consultant,” said Wallace-Benjamin, former chief of staff to Governor Deval Patrick, whose main task would have been scouting a suitable prospect for president on behalf of The Home. “So, I’m being interviewed about providing the search services … and at one point, a board member stops and says, ‘You’re interviewing for the wrong job'”

The executive board members turned down Wallace-Benjamin as search consultant because, they agreed, she lacked experience. But several months later, the candidate who won contacted Wallace-Benjamin by phone. The consultant asked her to re-apply, however, this time, for president.

“I’d done a lot of research about the organization,” said Wallace-Benjamin. She said she was excited for the opportunity.

She was ready, with a keen community leadership sensibility informed by a history of hands-on experience. For 11 years prior, Wallace-Benjamin served as president of The Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, which since 1919 has promoted civil rights, and economic self-reliance of the city’s African- American community, and other people of color, according to the official website.

In February 2003, after a series of strenuous interviews, and presentations on her relevant experience, the board named Wallace-Benjamin president of The Home.

The Home for Little Wanderers is a non-profit organization that provides care to the commonwealth’s most vulnerable children and families, Wallace-Benjamin said. Located at 271 Huntington Ave., on the block between Gainsborough Street and Massachusetts Avenue, The Home is about a five-minute walk from Northeastern’s campus.

The organization promotes social, emotional and mental health in impoverished children and families through services that reach thousands of people each year in 20 programs statewide, she said.

Immediately, Wallace-Benjamin used her pull to make needed changes at The Home. Due to recent mergers of several human service and child-serving organizations, The Home, once of humble size, suddenly grew large.

“It needed a little help moving into a more sophisticated direction,” Wallace-Benjamin said.

The newly-appointed president introduced systems, processes, procedures and programs tailored to The Home’s size. Quickly, it grew to scale.

At present, The Home is the largest child welfare agency in New England. It is also the oldest in the nation.

“There was the challenge of growing pains when I first got here,” she said. “What I’ve been able to bring is a kind of a management, stability, vision and direction over a very large and complex service organization.”

And her skillful leadership did not go unnoticed.

In November 2006, when an old friend called her, Wallace-Benjamin was offered the chance to lead a different administration and oversee a team of more than 60 workers.

Deval Patrick, shortly after he won the gubernatorial election, invited Wallace-Benjamin to be his chief of staff. She accepted, and served on Governor-Elect Patrick’s staff for three months before Doug Rubin succeeded her.

After a hiatus from The Home, Wallace-Benjamin resumed her work last May. Sitting in her Huntington Avenue office, she spoke of the importance of The Home and its influence on local children adversely affected – socially, emotionally and physically – by poverty.

“Everyone understands that if kids don’t have healthy heads and healthy hearts, they’re not able to perform in school, to build strong relationships with their peers and adults,” she said. “They’re not able to be successful.”

In her four years at The Home, Wallace-Benjamin’s favorite memory has to do with the children touched by The Home’s programs. In her first year as president, Wallace-Benjamin started a group called the Presidential Youth Council, where 10 children per year are recruited from various statewide programs, to meet with Wallace-Benjamin on a monthly basis. They get to know her. She gets to know them.

“I wanted to understand, from the kids, what it was like to live in one of our programs,” she said. Their perspectives “absolutely help” Wallace-Benjamin manage The Home effectively, she said.

And it is meaningful on a personal level to Wallace-Benjamin.

“Just watching them grow … is really, really wonderful,” she said. “I’ve come to meet some very nice young people who have confronted some real, serious challenges.”