Intro­duc­ing Steve Gay­dos, Our Inter­im CEO

September 24, 2024

On Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 13^th, Grace Hong Duf­fin stepped down as CEO after 6 years of ser­vice in the role. At that time, Steve Gay­dos, KYC’s CFO assumed the Inter­im CEO posi­tion while a nation­wide search is con­duct­ed for the agency’s next leader.

Steve joined the Exec­u­tive Lead­er­ship Team in Jan­u­ary of 2024, but has already proven to be an extra­or­di­nary leader. ​“I have full con­fi­dence in Steve’s abil­i­ty to lead the orga­ni­za­tion dur­ing this time of tran­si­tion” shared Grace. ​“From our first con­ver­sa­tion, it was clear that his health­care finan­cial expe­ri­ence, mis­sion-dri­ven focus, and strate­gic lead­er­ship style aligned with KYC’s needs and values.”

Steve’s non­prof­it expe­ri­ence includes terms with orga­ni­za­tions at KYC’s size and larg­er. Pri­or to com­ing to KYC, Steve spent sev­en years as the Chief Finan­cial and Oper­a­tions Offi­cer for All Chica­go Mak­ing Home­less­ness His­to­ry, dur­ing which time the organization’s bud­get grew near­ly ten­fold. Steve was instru­men­tal in build­ing the finan­cial and oper­a­tional capac­i­ty to sup­port this expo­nen­tial growth.

From 2013 to 2017, Steve was the Direc­tor of Finance and Admin­is­tra­tion for Catholic Char­i­ties, Dio­cese of Joli­et, join­ing the staff after serv­ing as a vol­un­teer Board Mem­ber. He sta­bi­lized the agency dur­ing a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion and suc­cess­ful­ly trans­formed the oper­a­tions of the organization. 

Before work­ing in the non­prof­it sec­tor, Steve spent more than 20 years as a health­care man­age­ment con­sul­tant, pro­vid­ing exec­u­tive over­sight and hands-on sup­port to med­ical and den­tal prac­tices through oper­a­tional bench­mark­ing, finan­cial assess­ments, rev­enue man­age­ment, human resources pol­i­cy devel­op­ment, and more. 

“Steve’s com­bi­na­tion of health­care and non­prof­it exper­tise gen­er­ates the bal­ance we need as the agency tran­si­tions into its next chap­ter” said Eliz­a­beth Demaret, Board Chair for KYC. ​“We’re grate­ful he joined the team at exact­ly the right time!” 

Steve will serve as the Inter­im CEO until a new CEO is named by KYC’s Board of Directors.

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