Spotlighting Sister Maureen O’Connell
In recognition of Women’s History Month, Imburgia Consulting can think of no one more deserving of acknowledgement than Faithful Citizen Award recipient, Sister Maureen O’Connell, founder of Angela House in Houston.
O’Connell founded Angela House in 2001 as a ministry serving women recently released from prison in order to help them gain their footing in the outside world. The program became Sister O’Connell’s mission when she learned that these women face many obstacles with few opportunities to build stable lives and, as a result, often become repeat offenders. Angela House’s staff members and volunteers provide residents with services designed to make their transition easier, which include counseling, spiritual support, job training, help with finding employment, and advice on healthy decision making.
A Lifetime of Preparation
Sister O’Connell’s lifetime of experiences helped her prepare for what is perhaps her greatest work to date. She spent 13 years as a Chicago police officer and police chaplain, then another 16 years as a Clinical Services Coordinator of The Children’s Assessment Center in Houston and Victim’s Assistance Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. In addition, she has been a Dominican Sister for 40 years, a religious order that is committed to social justice.
It was during her volunteer work as a chaplain at Gatesville, a women’s prison in Texas, that O’Connell realized that incarcerated women who were repeat offenders had no safe place to live once they left prison and often fell back to socializing with negative people, places and things, increasing their chances of recidivism. In 2002, she developed a program of interventions that includes trauma-informed counseling, addition recovery, employment preparation, and personal and spiritual growth platforms, in addition to the residential living at Angela House that is free for the women it houses. She served as Executive Director of Angela House for 17 years before retiring in 2018. Today she serves on its Board of Directors and is also the Archdiocese’s Director for the Secretariat of Social Concerns, a position that oversees and assists its social services agencies.
A Dream Come True
Recently, O’Connell attended the ribbon cutting for The Priory, Angela’s new location in Houston. Imburgia Consulting had the privilege of overseeing and completing the two-year renovation and modernization of the 1959 building that can now provide its services to even more women leaving prison.
To date, Angela House has served over 430 women in 18 years with a success rate of 76 percent in its mission to keep former convicts out of prison.
