Former Turner manager is now leading Georgia Works through transformation
The first person most people meet at Georgia Works is Adolphus Chandler.
As the nonprofit’s intake coordinator, he screens applicants and assigns beds in a new 48-bed bunk room, Gary Jones Hall, where men stay for their first 30 days.
He is also a graduate of the program for homeless men.
“I like to share with the clients here that I did wrong so long I thought wrong was right,” Chandler said. “But when I just got sick and tired of being incarcerated … sick and tired of being homeless and all of that, I decided to ask God to help me change my life.”
A case manager told him about Georgia Works.
“What surprised me was … all the people said, ‘We ain’t worried about your past. We want to know what you want to do now to get yourself together,’” he added. “Me, personally, I was willing to do anything if it kept me from going back to the street. And so I stayed about 10 months.”
Former director Phil Hunter offered Chandler a job as a site supervisor in 2013. He has been with Georgia Works ever since.
“We jokingly call him The Gatekeeper because no one enters the program without first speaking with Adolphus,” said president and CEO Darlene Schultz.
Chandler is one of 1,200 men who have graduated from Georgia Works since it was founded in 2013 to help connect homeless men with housing, counseling, education and work training.
Since taking the helm in 2020, Schultz has led Georgia Works through a period of transformation, including a new building and programs — and hopes other communities will follow.
From entertainment to nonprofits
Schultz’s career started with typing up financial statements for the Houston Oilers in 1978.
After a move to Atlanta in 1984, she held business management roles at the Cartoon Network, TBS and CNN and was the executive assistant to Derek Schiller when he was executive vice president of sales and marketing for the Atlanta Braves.
“I just looked around one day and said, ‘I have done this for 30+ years,’ and I went home and told my husband that night, ‘I don’t need your permission. I’m going to find something in the nonprofit world,’” she said.
That led to an executive director role at housing nonprofit 3Keys in 2009. Over the next 11 years, she helped expand the program from 200 to 500 units of permanent supportive housing and raised $12 million to refurbish its five buildings.
By 2020, Schultz “was at the point where I really felt like I had checked all my boxes to accomplish what I wanted to at 3Keys.” She had been on the board of directors for Georgia Works since 2014, and “knew what the potential was” there.
When Georgia Works conducted a search for a CEO, Schultz raised her hand.
“It came down to three people,” she said. “I went home that night and told my husband, ‘I’m in the top three,’ and he said, ‘Do you really think they’re going to hire an old woman to run an all-men’s organization?’”
“They did, and it has just been a joy,” Schultz said.
A permanent home
One of Schultz’s first tasks was to find a new home for Georgia Works, which had been leasing the second floor of the Gateway Center building downtown.
After receiving $5.5 million through a grant from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, Georgia Works purchased the Odd Fellows Building in March 2023. Schultz helped raise an additional $9.5 million to turn the historic Sweet Auburn office complex into a home for Georgia Works and the men it serves.
Staff and participants moved into the building in January. The next day, Georgia Works moved five women into a new program in DeKalb County.
“I accomplished my five-year goals — boom, boom, boom — in three days,” she joked.
Her remit also includes helping with intake, managing the building, raising funds and expanding outreach and programming, which includes a construction training course that launched in January and has since seen 37 graduates.
“Georgia Works is a very unique nonprofit in that … from the moment you move in the door, we’re addressing those barriers that likely got you into homelessness or incarceration in the first place, but we want to take care of it all at once in a very holistic way by providing these wraparound services,” she added.
That includes mental health and medical services, case managers, addiction counselors and graduate housing where men can stay for $500 a month.
“It keeps rent very reasonable for them until they can save a little bit more money. And when they get ready to leave us and the building, we’re going to help them find an apartment complex (where) the landlord is eager to help continue their second chance,” Schultz said.
She noted Georgia Works initially focused on men because they accounted for 70% of Atlanta’s unhoused population in 2013. That’s still the case. According to a 2025 count, an estimated 73% of the homeless people in Atlanta were male.
What’s next
According to Schultz’s figures, the program saves taxpayers $42,000 for each participant “because they’re not taking up a bed at Grady Hospital, they’re not taking up the police officers’ time, they’re not in the back of an ambulance, they’re not moving slowly through the judicial system waiting for a hearing, a bond or court date to be set.”
She hopes other cities will use the Georgia Works blueprint to replicate the program. And, with about 60% of the 160 beds occupied, she also hopes to fill the building to capacity and expand the women’s program.
“I have accomplished more in the last five years than I ever dreamed possible because of opening this new building,” Schultz said. “I still feel giddy driving to work and getting off on Auburn Avenue and pulling into the parking lot and walking into the door and realizing that Georgia Works is the owner of this building and that these men are going to be the next graduates.”
Chandler expressed a similar sentiment.
“This is the longest job I’ve ever had and it’s more than just a job with me. It’s personal,” he said. “I want everyone to come through here and get what I got from the program. And that’s back to self-sufficiency … Georgia Works works. It works.”
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