Celess Roman was thrust into the role of advocate at an early age. Her mom, who had fled to the U.S. during a civil war in El Salvador, was facing deportation once her Temporary Protected Status work permit expired.

“And so, because I was born here, I would have ended up staying here with my siblings and she would have been sent to El Salvador—a place that wasn’t her home and [where she] hadn’t lived since she was a kid,” Roman says. “So at the age of five, I walked into the courthouse with my mom and siblings to make a statement, not knowing if I would leave with my mom or not.”

Distressing as that situation was, Roman also sees it as the catalyst that pushed her into a career serving others, beginning as a volunteer on the kitchen team at Outside In and carrying through to her current role as program director for Clackamas Service Center, an organization that has been serving low- and no-income Portlanders with food and other resources since 1973. And as she points out with no small amount of pride, she is also the first bilingual Latina to be in this role.

In the five years since Roman joined CSC, she has helped continue the CSC’s valiant work of providing hot meals, groceries, showers, clothing, and hygiene products to individuals and families in East Portland and Clackamas County. But one of her biggest successes is the work she did during the pandemic to implement a rental assistance program to provide housing stability for residents of Clackamas County who were struggling to make ends meet and keep bills paid.

“A lot of other organizations were like, ‘We’re going to close down,’” Roman says. “I was like ‘No. What else are we doing to continue serving people?’”With some crucial community support, she set up two food distribution centers at elementary schools in North Clackamas Schools, serving over 900 households during the school year.

“I feel like my successes have been just based on community needs,” she says. “No matter what demand there is in our community, I have been able to find a way to create low-barrier access to get connected to our services.”

Roman is not shy about noting that the drive she has to work as hard as she continues to do in the nonprofit field comes from a very personal place. She grew up with three siblings in a single-parent household that was constantly struggling financially. “There was a moment I remember when we were at the grocery store,” Roman says, “and I think we were just buying bread, milk, and cheese, and we didn’t have enough money to even pay for those basic necessities. That was the first time I felt what it was like to go without food and to be at the cash register and to know that we can’t afford these three items.”

Through it all, she had the unwavering support of her mom, who reminded them all, Roman says, “the best thing you can do for yourself is get an education and surround yourself with people who believe in you.” Roman did just that, graduating from Portland State University with a degree in public health and earning the backing of her colleagues at CSC.

“I get asked questions like, ‘How do you do the work you do?’” she says. “It’s because I care for people so much. If there wasn’t a human that cared for me in times that I needed it as a child to adolescence to when I was an undergrad…if people didn’t see my value, I might not be here. The way I have lived my life is I want to pay it forward. And even though things are very hard and it’s very overwhelming, and I’m in people’s business, I like to say, ‘I’m in it with you.’”