Michele LeMon Stitt’s family likes to joke that she can’t walk through an airport without running into someone she knows. And it’s a known fact that she can always get people to open up in first conversations. “I’m a connector—of people, places, and ideas,” says Stitt. “I like knowing people and what they’re thinking about and working on. And I enjoy connecting individuals and connecting organizations. Collaboration creates greater impact than working alone.”
That gift for connecting has proven invaluable in Stitt’s current assignment as community outreach leader for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Kansas City area. Stitt began serving shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which brought both challenges and opportunities. “Things shut down, but the needs didn’t go away,” she says. “We found that God had important work for us to do that was made even more possible by the pandemic.”
For example, Stitt and her team wanted to increase connections with city leaders who worked with marginalized communities. While scheduling in-person meetings might previously have taken months, during shutdown people readily accepted invitations for virtual meetings. As they entered others’ homes via Zoom, “we got to know each other as brothers and sisters, and this allowed us to become trusted coworkers in good causes,” says Stitt. “It was a miraculous way God expedited relationship building.”
One opportunity to work together came during summer 2020, when violence affected many US cities. The Church’s Welfare Department offered a truckload of critical commodities and invited Stitt’s committee to find a high-impact way to use it. Together with other faith-based organizations, they created a drive-through Peacemakers Pop-Up, where volunteers, including local police officers, distributed food, masks, clothing, information about social services, and even prayer rocks painted by Latter-day Saint youth. “So many people came together to lift our brothers and sisters,” says Stitt. “We were all witnesses that when we work together, God magnifies the effort.”
Since then, the group has sponsored two additional pop-ups and is currently partnering to help families access living-wage employment by connecting them with short-term job training and helping remove barriers so they can participate.
A 1988 human resources alumna, Stitt was selected by General Electric (GE) for the company’s two-year intensive financial management program, from which she graduated with honors. She worked for GE Capital and GE Medical Systems for eight years as a leader in quality, finance, and financial services.
Stitt and her husband, Jeff, met at GE in Milwaukee—though, coincidentally, they were born in the same hospital and delivered by the same doctor in Kansas City exactly a month apart. Stitt became a stay-at-home parent after their first child was born; the couple later adopted a daughter from Khabarovsk, Russia.
Jeff ’s career took the family to Kentucky, Minnesota, Utah, South Africa, and Switzerland. Three years ago, they returned “home” to Overland Park, Kansas. “We have loved every place we’ve lived,” says Stitt. “We’ve been blessed to find friends and mentors who helped us navigate the culture and immerse ourselves as ‘fellow citizens’ as much as possible.” These experiences, Stitt notes, have helped her be more open to other perspectives and appreciate different ways of approaching problems. “I think it has made me more invested in helping people come together in ways that amplify strengths. It’s made me treasure unity.”
In each community, Stitt has been recruited for volunteer leadership roles, including director of the Calvary Community Outreach Network board in Kansas City, member of the special education advisory council for the Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, president of the parents’ association at the Inter-Community School in Zurich, and member of the board of directors for North Sands Learning Academy in Johannesburg. “I have a lot of energy and willingness to work. With my family responsibilities, volunteering has been a good fit for me,” says Stitt. “As a member of a variety of groups seeking to lift others, I’ve seen the truth of what Joseph Smith taught: ‘By union of feeling we obtain power with God.’”
