Zach Blend believes making an important decision comes down to balancing three factors: mission, margin and morale, all within compliance. “This has served as a proper measuring stick for matters related to organizational advancement,” he said.
That formula has worked for Blend in his role as chief executive officer of the Goshen Valley Foundation, a health and human services nonprofit. “Goshen Valley provides hope and healing to foster youth and vulnerable families through relational, trauma-responsive services to cultivate personal healing and generational change,” the organization said.
“Through its three unique foster care programs, young men, women and children receive a variety of services, such as residential and in home care; therapy; educational, employment and life skills services; legal advocacy; and any service necessary to ensure the child is placed in a healthy, permanent home.” Blend has said that the decision to launch and ultimately scale community based services including forms of therapy and counseling in an effort to serve families preventively with hopes of limiting the need for foster care has been the most important risk he has taken in his career.
Under Blend’s leadership, Goshen Valley has grown its revenue from $4.7 million in 2016 to over $10 million in 2022. It has also grown its residential programs from serving an average of 73 children per day in 2016 to 120 children per day in 2022. Goshen Valley has successfully launched a community mental health and family support services program from $8,000 revenue in 2019 to more than $1.5 million in 2022.
Blend has received numerous recognitions and accomplishments related to his work in human services and child welfare. In 2014, Blend was named in the Top 10 in 10 Young Professionals to Watch in Cherokee County and recognized as one of Georgia Trend Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40. In 2018, he received congressional recognition as an Angels in Adoption recipient. Blend has led Goshen Valley to recognition as a Top Workplace by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 2019. This recognition has blossomed from Blend’s ability to learn from one’s failures while finding the best in others. This continues to serve as a guiding light to every decision that is made for the Goshen Valley Foundation.
Blend has served as an adjunct professor at Reinhardt University’s McCamish School of Business and on several boards of directors, including Together Georgia, the Cherokee County Educational Foundation, the Presidents Circle at Reinhardt University, the Cherokee County YMCA and the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce. “Of all these accomplishments, Zach is most proud of the launch and success of the community mental health and family support services program,” Blend’s team said. “Zach says that he sleeps better at night knowing that families are able to access the supports they really need and that Goshen Valley is truly living into its mission to provide hope and healing to foster youth and vulnerable families through relational, trauma-responsive services to cultivate personal healing and generational change.”
