Photo of Heather Prabish

By Leah Spitzer

This month, we’d like to feature one of our most active volunteers, Heather Prabish.  Heather volunteers in Campaigns and Actions, Partnerships and Strategy and Implementation.  Heather has also participated in our Coffee Party Panelists Team, and has helped out in several foundation projects such as Coffee Party Talks, Panelist guidelines and member surveys.

Heather was born and raised in Nebraska and has lived most of her adult life in Chicago suburbs where she now resides.  Heather is the mother of six children between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Heather is the Director of Support and Training for a software company and works with automated reporting inside the market research industry.

Heather has been volunteering with the Coffee Party since March.   She was drawn to the Coffee Party through friends and followed our Facebook page before signing up as a volunteer. She was surprised by the Primary election results and that encouraged her to become active. Heather really likes our commitment to being reasonable and civil and keeping that engagement during difficult conversations.  She wanted to do something to help the country and the community to make sure it is the type of place she’d like to live.  

Heather first signed up in Campaigns and Actions and Strategy and Implementation.  She likes that Strategy and Implementation looks forward for the Coffee Party to help determine the next steps we need to take.   In other words, it has the general concerns and health of the organization in mind.  Campaigns and Actions works to engage people and promote our ideals and find things that people can do and be involved with.  It is very action oriented.  

Heather then received an invitation to Partnerships.  This group looks at other organizations and evaluates them against our goals to see if they have potential for collaboration.  Heather mentioned a need for more volunteers in Partnerships.  One good thing about this group is that if she occasionally misses a call, she can still continue her research and post her thoughts on their private Facebook page or via email.

Heather’s favorite thing about volunteering with the Coffee Party is that she can hear ideas from all points of view. Heather tends to lean more conservatively than many of our volunteers, so it’s interesting to hear those different perspectives.  People are whole people and ideas are just ideas.  

Heather’s favorite project so far was hosting the Coffee Party Talks.  Heather has done two Coffee Party Talks.  The first one was with family members (mandatory for her 4 older children).  It was interesting listening to their views and hearing the optimism and hope in their voices and inspiring them to engage civilly.   The  second Talk was with some non family participants drawn from her book club and running club. They were excited to be a part of it. Heather has a lot of friends that are Trump supporters and the CP Talk provided a space where they could talk without being attacked and that appealed to them.   There was a level of trust  that they would remain friends anyway so they were able to freely discuss why they were voting a certain way.  

When not volunteering, Heather enjoys reading and being involved with her children’s activities.  She enjoys watching them progress and grow.  Heather really likes the conversations she has with her children especially after dancing or swimming.

Thank you, Heather for all your contributions to the Coffee Party.  

(Would you like to volunteer?  Go to www.coffeepartyusa.com/volunteer)