YMCA hires longtime local as new executive director

After a two-month long interview process, including 10 separate question and answer sessions – four of which took place before a panel of her peers – Kelly Ramirez was still unsure if she landed her dream job as the Mount Madonna YMCA’s Executive Director.
Previously the Chief Development Officer of The Young Women’s Christian Association in San Jose (a separate entity altogether from the YWCA), Ramirez had her doubts.
But as a Gilroy High School alumna and former educator at three local schools (St. Mary and Eliot elementary; Gavilan College) Ramirez does have the local pedigree.
“It was the most comprehensive interview process I have ever been through,” admitted Ramirez, who got the call she’d longed for Monday evening, right as she began her work commute back home to Gilroy. “Obviously, I knew I was finalist at that point. But during this entire process, I very much understood I was an underdog because I was not a current YMCA employee.”
But as it turns out, Ramirez was the best person for the job – and responded with a resounding “yes!” when offered the executive director position, which had been vacated by former director Chris Gione who left the YMCA in May to become the City of Morgan Hill’s Community Services Director.
“I feel like my career path has led me back home,” said Ramirez, whose three children graduated from the Gilroy Unified School District. “It’s just a heartwarming feeling knowing I’ll be working and serving the community I live in.”
Working to establish a stronger YMCA presence in Gilroy – where she has remained since moving one day before her freshman year of high school and where her husband of 26 years also grew up – is the first order of business.
“One of the things I’d really like to see is a stronger presence in Gilroy, more equivalent as to what is in Morgan Hill,” said Ramirez, who plans on shuffling between her main office at the Centennial Recreation Center in Morgan Hill and the YMCA’s satellite location on First Street in Gilroy.
“There’s such a strong presence in Morgan Hill and I would like to be able to continue the successes there and bring the successes and growth in the Gilroy community” she added.
While Ramirez’s first official day on the job will be Sept. 12, she attended the most recent YMCA Board of Directors meeting and anxiously awaits “working alongside the Board, staff and other community partners in Gilroy and Morgan Hill.”
“My career path has really led me to this position…they kind of all culminated to this opportunity,” said Ramirez of her career experience in teaching, coaching and nonprofit organizations. She also is a former local business owner of Balance Fitness in Gilroy. 
Although Ramirez said she’ll miss her friends at the YWCA, where she spent 3.5 years, she looks forward to cutting out the daily commute to San Jose.
“I won’t miss it,” Ramirez said. “There are many people (and things) I will miss, but the commute is not one of them.”