Eileen Richardson Retires from Role of CEO of DST after 17 Years of Homeless Advocacy
Eileen Richardson, founder, president, and CEO of Downtown Streets Team (DST) has announced her transition into retirement. An interim CEO will be named while the Board of Directors and senior management begin the search for her replacement. She makes this decision confident that senior leadership at DST share her vision and commitment to ending homelessness.
Formerly a venture capitalist and the CEO of Napster, Richardson applied an innovative start-up energy to the crisis of homelessness. She started DST in Palo Alto, California with four unhoused Team Members (clients) and a budget of less than $40,000. Since then, Richardson has overseen the growth of DST to 16 communities across Northern and Central California. The nonprofit serves over 400 unhoused Californians with a staff of nearly 100 and an annual budget of $14 million. DST’s innovative model of helping unhoused and housing insecure individuals achieve self-sufficiency through personalized case management, employment services, and a voucher program for basic necessities was hailed by the League of California Cities as an evidence-based best practice in 2018. Under her leadership, DST has helped employ or house over 4,000 Team Members experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
Throughout her career in homeless advocacy, Richardson has received numerous acknowledgements that include being named a tech world Visionary by The New York Times (2018), being nominated for Visionary of the Year by the SF Chronicle (2019), receiving the James Irvine Foundation’s Leadership Award (2019), and receiving CalTravel’s Advocate for the Homeless Award (2021).
Richardson’s approach to ending homelessness has always been to foster a supportive community of unhoused neighbors. By sharing and drawing upon their lived experience and relying upon one another for support, Team Members take the lead in decision making and in charting their own paths out of homelessness. The aim of DST staff is to support this successful team environment. In her address to staff, Richardson stated, “I think I can say that I’ve changed some lives for the better in my time here, but my greatest joy is having had the opportunity to empower the staff at DST to help transform so many more.”