UALR alumna Georgia Mjartan, the executive director of Our House, a non-profit shelter for homeless families, is featured in this month’s issue of Arkansas Life as one of eight Arkansans of the Year.

With a $1 million annual budget, Mjartan and her staff of 37 provide job training and placement, child care, and summer camps to more than 1,000 people every year.

She and the others selected by the magazine’s editorial team were recognized for demonstrating “tireless commitment to making our state a better place to live.”

According to Arkansas Life, Mjartan is “slowly whittling down a checklist of goals she made when she first started the job.”

In 2005, Mjartan took on the challenge of leading Our House at only 25 years of age and at a time when the organization couldn’t pay its utility bills or pay the contractors for an emergency shelter.

Today, she is helping lead the way to a new 19,000-square-foot youth center that will serve more than 140 children per day when it opens next spring, more than tripling the number of homeless and near-homeless children who will be served.

Mjartan has credited her success in managing resources for Our House to the things she learned while participating in UALR extracurricular activities.

She was president of the Student Government Association, editor of a literary magazine, and first runner-up for homecoming queen. She also competed for a Rhodes Scholarship and became UALR’s first George Mitchell Scholar, which funded her study at the University of Ulster in Ireland.

The former Donaghey Scholar was also UALR’s 2002 Whitbeck Scholar who led the class at commencement in a silver robe signifying her rank as first in her class. Mjartan also earned a Fannie Mae Foundation Fellowship to study at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

She and her husband, Dominick, also a former Donaghey Scholar, are active with the UALR Alumni Association and the Office of Recruitment.

Learn more about Mjartan and the work at Our House at UALR Grads@Work.