TIES Executive Committee
Lucy and Boyd Eustace
Founders
In 1989, Lucy and Boyd moved from Texas to Baltimore, where Boyd worked with developmentally disabled adults and attended graduate school. Once in Baltimore, Lucy was a house manager and worked at a day program for intellectually disabled individuals. After graduate school, Boyd worked with the seriously mentally ill in East Baltimore and in an emergency room, and then as a therapist and clinical supervisor in a hospital-based mental health clinic in West Baltimore. He also did school-based volunteer work and community advocacy during this time. He now sees patients in private practice and owns and manages LB Counseling Group in Baltimore City.
When her youngest child was in elementary school, Lucy closed her daycare program and went back to college to fulfill her dream of becoming a schoolteacher, eventually earning her master’s degree in education from Towson University. “I was drawn to becoming a teacher from an early age because of teachers I had growing up who made learning fun,” she says. She landed a job at an elementary/middle school in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Baltimore city 16 years ago and never left.
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“I love seeing where students start at the first of the year, and how much they grow and learn throughout the year,” she says, adding that she also enjoys having fun with the kids and building relationships with them and their families. It is rewarding to have students that I taught as young children come back and visit me on break from high school or college and come to know generations of families that make up the community. I'm inspired by the belief that my calling is to help children unlock their unlimited potential while experiencing a sense of community and nurturing."
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Teresa Tawes
founding Board Executive
For Teresa, the T.I.E.S. mission is a natural extension of what’s been her life’s work: “being a person for others,” a core tenet of her Jesuit education. Originally from West Virginia, Teresa moved to Baltimore in 1993 to attend graduate school at Loyola, where she earned graduate degrees in clinical psychology and business administration. Her 20 years as the outpatient program director for Harford-Belair Community Mental Health taught her that the only way to help break the cycle of poverty is by empowering people through wraparound services that put relationships first, which is what drew her to Boyd’s vision. “Our goal is to join with the family and really become part of their world. We’re in it for the lifelong connection,” she says, adding that she views education as “the real equalizer.” “Education is something that never can be taken from the TIES scholars,” says Teresa, who lives in Ohio with her family. “There is nothing more powerful than education for lifelong achievement.”
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Tracey Johnson
Vice President of the Board of Directors
For Tracey Johnson, working with children has always been her goal. She was the babysitter for her neighborhood and church nursery growing up in Takoma Park, Maryland. She moved to Baltimore to attend Morgan State University and, following graduation in 1997, became a teacher in the Baltimore City Public Schools.
"For over 25 years as an elementary school teacher, I have enjoyed many 'aha' moments. When the lightbulb comes on for a student...these are the transformative moments. I want to work with TIES to change the trajectory of the students' lives we help."
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Lorrie Strohecker
founding Board Executive
For Lorrie Strohecker, hobbies rarely tend to stay just hobbies. First she took sewing from a pastime to a 25-year career producing custom textiles for luxury hotels and casinos across the US. Then in 2018, what started with a candle-making kit became Little Pink Farmhouse, a boutique candle and home goods business that distributes nationally. Lorrie, who’s also a mother of six, says she feels privileged to be lending her creativity and entrepreneurial experience to launching T.I.E.S. with her brother, Boyd, in honor of their late brother, Todd. “Education meant so much to him,” she says. “To be able to do something really good in this world and something that, when we were children, we never even could think about--and doing it with my brother and in honor of my other brother, like the three of us are back together in a way--that’s the most important thing to me.” Lorrie lives on a working ranch in Montana with her husband, Greg.