Community and Connection: One woman's volunteer efforts are plentiful
Heidi Jorgenson wears a lot of hats in the Brandon community.
She’s the vice chair for the Brandon Community Foundation, the assistant principal at Washington High School in Sioux Falls, and runs a Praying Moms group for Brandon Valley High’s graduating class of 2021. She’s also taught Crucial Conversations classes for 10 years and eight years of teaching confirmation classes for her sons. Heidi can also be found helping her husband, Tim, run the family business, Splitrock Furniture.
Despite her many titles, they all have one thing in common: connection and community
She has served on the Brandon Community Foundation Board of Directors for four years, but her father-in-law Joel Jorgenson, was one of the founding members, which initially led the family to their involvement with the Foundation.
“That’s part of what’s important to our family is that we live here so we invest here and we want the community to be vibrant,” she said.
Jorgenson assumed the job as the chairwoman of Oak &Vine from Erin Doll. Oak & Vine is the largest fundraiser the Foundation has every year. For this event, Jorgenson deals with a lot of logistic work to plan the evening, coordinate sponsors, devise a theme for the event and who will be taking the podium.
“This is where we live and it will only be as great as we choose for it to be with the intentional choices we make to be involved,” she said.
As the Community Foundation begins its 16th year this year, Oak & Vine began several years later. The event is traditionally held on the last Friday of October, and this year’s date is Oct. 28.
Funds raised at Oak & Vine are directed to the endowment fund, which Jorgenson said has surpassed the 1 million-dollar mark. A percentage of interest realized from the invested funds is earmarked for community grants that Brandon Valley area 501(c)3 organizations apply for. In the past, the Foundation has bought a special machine for the fire department to wash their protective gear in after a fire, provided funds to the Brandon Valley Area Baseball Association, sent high school students to the Best Buddies conference, and funded endeavors of the Brandon Valley Band Parents.
That’s only a sampling of how the Foundation has shared the community wealth.
Jorgenson is the backbone for coordinating the Oak & Vine fundraiser.
“She’s not afraid of digging right in and doing the work,” Doll said. “She’s not somebody who’s going to sit in a board meeting and talk about what needs to be done. And then come back the next month and talk again about what needs to be done. She’s a doer.”
From August to June, Jorgenson is at the Washington High School in Sioux Falls in her role as an assistant principal. Again, she said she felt called to education because of her ability to make and foster connections.
“For me, it’s always been a calling of service, I always knew that these were my gifts and it’s my responsibility to use these gifts to help others,” she said. “I think that’s why I like being invested and involved in a community because I feel like I have things to offer and I always feel like I have things to learn.”
Education, it seems, is a family endeavor for Jorgenson. Her mother, grandmother and aunts were all teachers, which is another reason Jorgenson felt the call to education.
“I knew from a very young age that I was going to be a preacher or a teacher,” Jorgenson said. “My favorite things to play when I was growing up was school and church. … We have educators in our family, so I really felt like this is what I was supposed to do.”
After graduating from Augustana College in 1998, Jorgenson taught for four years in California before returning to South Dakota after marrying her husband, Tim. She then taught English at Washington High School from 2002-10 before moving to the Project Based Learning Academy in Sioux Falls where she was a teacher and eventually assistant principal for 10 more years.
In the spring of 2020, she returned to Washington for the assistant principal position and has remained in that role ever since.
Due to her affinity for education, Jorgenson has also taught a Crucial Conversations class for 10 years to new administrators, counselors and instructional coaches. Crucial Conversations is a program through Vital Smart that teaches people how to respond to difficult conversations and approach them with empathy.
“A conversation is crucial when the issue is really important to you, there’s a sense of urgency to have a conversation right now and there are lots of emotions involved,” she said. “It’s a conversation that’s important to everyone. There are some strategies that you can use. It’s not necessarily about winning in a conversation, but it’s about how to gain a deeper understanding of each other and have mutual respect for one another when those conversations are really tough.”
Jorgenson also used her teaching skills to teach confirmation for her two sons, Jacob, 19, and Owen, 15, for eight years. Apart from confirmation, Jorgenson and her family are very active at Brandon Lutheran Church. She serves on the Lead Initiative committee and is the leader of a Praying Moms group for the 2021 class of BVHS graduates.
The 12 moms in Jorgenson’s group meet once a month to talk about their struggles with their children going to college. The moms support each other, pray for their children and send care packages.
“It was a way for moms of college kids who had just graduated to be in community together and share the highs and lows of that transitional time,” Jorgenson said.
For Jorgenson, community and connection are what drives her to get involved and help better the lives of those around her, and if one thing is clear from Jorgenson’s volunteer efforts, it’s that she truly cares for the community of Brandon.
“We humans need humans,” she said. “I think that’s what motivates me to I want to be a part of groups where we do share resources. I have a friend who says the smartest person in the room is the room. There’s no one human who can know all the things, but you should never underestimate that small group of people who want to do something. I think that’s how all things happen. That’s how the Community Foundation happened. A small group of people got together and said, ‘We’re going to do this.’ It’s how Brandon Lutheran said, ‘We’re going to feed lunches to kids on Wednesday.’ It is how moms get together and say, ‘No, we need each other this year.’ We need to pray for each other, we need that connection with each other because it’s not always easy. And when it’s not easy, other humans are what get you through that.”