New director named for Queen of Peace Center

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Pennington

Lara Pennington will become executive director of Queen of Peace Center on Jan. 1, replacing retiring executive director Connie Neumann, leaving after 23 years with the Catholic Charities agency.

Queen of Peace Center, located in Cathedral Tower in the Central West End, is a family-based behavioral health center for women dealing with substance abuse and mental illness and for their children. The agency provides a variety of services and treatments for their women clients, both residential and outpatient, and behavioral health care and day care for their children.

Under Neumann’s leadership, Queen of Peace went from serving 100 women a year on a $700,000 budget in 1988 to serving approximately 2,000 women, children and their families annually with a budget of $8 million. Through the help of Queen of Peace Center, more than 40,000 women and children have been helped and more than 1,000 babies were born drug free.

Neumann, a member of Immacolata Parish in Richmond Heights, said she was blessed and humbled by her years of service at Queen of Peace Center. While providing quality, affordable programs “through economic and political climate changes” is challenging, she said “the mission of the center could not exist” without its many supporters — the board of directors, civic and community leaders, various foundations and departments of mental health and a dedicated group of staff members and volunteers.

As a Catholic Charities federation agency, Neumann said, “Queen of Peace Center has flourished not only through, but because of, its identity steeped in the traditions of the Catholic Church.”

Pennington, a parishioner at the Washington University Newman Center, is currently director of programs and community development. She has served at Queen of Peace Center since 2007, when she began working as a grants and community associate, and has worked closely with Neumann.

Pennington has supervised university interns, collaborated with the Family Treatment Coalition as part of the Rebecca Project on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., working with government policymakers on gender-specific and family-centered behavioral health treatment. She developed the center’s advocacy program and successfully secured federal, state and foundation grants.

For more information on Queen of Peace Center, go online to qopcstl.org .