Angelia Williams followed a difficult path to her status as director of special projects at the anti-poverty Great Lakes Bay Health Centers, formerly Health Delivery Inc.
She first dreamed of becoming a doctor, but she shifted quickly to registered nursing. She began at Michigan State University and transferred to Florida A&M, where she achieved her 1979 bachelor’s degree in nursing.
At Saginaw St. Mary’s and at Ann Arbor St. Joseph’s Mercy during those early career years, she encountered what she perceived as several “qualified for promotions but denied” experiences, aka race bias.
And so then came decision time. Should she remain in her initial career choice of health care, or should she pursue easier options such as real estate?
Williams, the same as she has done often in life, relied on her religious faith to guide her path: “Regardless of personal adversities and sacrifices, stay focused on your God-given purpose.”
Medicine won the battle. Angelia returned to Florida, but this time, if she faced more prejudice, she would possess an undeniable resume. She resumed nursing while earning 1989 certification as an adult nurse practitioner, and eventually completed a 2000 master’s in nursing from Florida International University-Miami.
She already had advanced to an administrative position in the Miami area for nearly a decade, but back in her hometown, the best was yet to come.
Health Delivery founder David Gamez hired her in 2002 with a key requirement to attain grant-writing expertise for special projects. She first deployed her in-house training to win funds for school-based health clinics at Saginaw High and Arthur Hill, along with the Ryan White HIV Medical Service Program for Great Lakes Bay’s 16-county region.
Her fulfillment comes not so much from all the paperwork, but from seeing the results in action. Other projects range from the HIV Hearth House on Hoyt Avenue to teen pregnancy services to tobacco cessation.
“All of these programs,” Williams says, “continue to demonstrate positive outcomes that meet the needs of persons who might have had limited access to services.”
This has been the Health Delivery/Great Lakes Bay mission ever since the 1960s, when Gamez first took leadership with outreach to migrants working on mid-Michigan farms.
“When the Covid-19 virus came along,” Angelia says, “we reached out to collaborate with some our community partners to help us identify more creative innovations for meeting the needs of the community. We overcame prohibitive costs that have resulted from the need for covid testing, health education related to the vaccine, outreach to support food insecurities, and other medical services education, with emphasis on keeping everyone safe during this pandemic.”
The most recent among many honors over her 42-year career is the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National School-Based Health Alliance. In addition to getting Saginaw High and Arthur Hill started, she served in a lead role with Michigan colleagues to support school clinics in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Williams is the eldest child of the late George and Anna Williams, who now is 89. Like her parents, she is a faithful member of Bethel AME Church. Her parochial education concluded with her 1974 graduation from the former St. Stephen High School, now a part of Nouvel Catholic Central. She credits her parents and mentors with “deeply embedding Christian values and faith that have led me to never forget that I am standing on the shoulders of many who treaded the nursing path before me and have made me who I am.”
She adds she is “very grateful for the partnerships that Great Lakes Bay Health Centers have cultivated with people in our communities, in order to improve health outcomes.”
Her top guidepost comes from Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, who lived to age 101 until her passing in 1989, an African-American pioneer in the law and in economics, and the first president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (1919-1923): “Don’t let anything stop you. There will be times when you’ll be disappointed, but you can’t stop.”
