AARP Honors SERA, INC Rita Anita Linger

Dr. Rita Anita Linger, PHD - President / CEO

Rita Anita Linger was born and raised in the “melt­ing pot” of New York City on the lower east-side of Man­hat­tan.  She has been respon­si­ble for direct­ing social jus­tice, human rela­tions, diver­sity, and com­mu­nity devel­op­ment ini­tia­tives around sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties and erad­i­ca­tion of poverty and vio­lence for thirty years.  She is also respon­si­ble for build­ing aware­ness and find­ing solu­tions around improved clin­i­cal encoun­ters in health­care for two decades.  She cur­rently serves as the President/CEO of SERA, Inc. (South­east Raleigh Assem­bly, Inc.)  SERA, Inc.’s mis­sion is to enhance the qual­ity of life for the res­i­dents of South­east Raleigh.

SERA, Inc. focus areas include:  Com­mu­nity Capac­ity Build­ing, Pub­lic Safety, Business/Equity, Health & Well­be­ing, Devel­op­ing the Entre­pre­neur­ial Spirit, Youth Empow­er­ment and Hous­ing.  Mrs. Linger for­merly served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the North Car­olina Coali­tion Against Domes­tic Vio­lence, a statewide orga­ni­za­tion which pro­vides sup­port ser­vices to local domes­tic vio­lence agen­cies and allied pro­fes­sion­als.  She was also respon­si­ble for found­ing a Social Jus­tice, Lead­er­ship, Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment, and Authen­tic Well­be­ing project called, “Cen­ter for Emer­gent Capa­bil­i­ties.”  She has served as the Ari­zona Supreme Court’s Fund­ing admin­is­tra­tor for ADR and Par­ent Edu­ca­tion Pro­grams, and has been respon­si­ble for launch­ing sev­eral non-profits and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able fund­ing streams for them.

Rita Anita believes in using person-centered processes to iden­tify, cul­ti­vate and syn­the­size capa­bil­i­ties within human sys­tems for pro­fes­sional and per­sonal suc­cess.  She believes as her favorite human­ist and psy­chol­o­gist, Abra­ham Maslow posits “People’s capa­bil­i­ties clamor to be used, and with­out those capa­bil­i­ties being real­ized, the per­son can atro­phy, and dis­ap­pear – dimin­ish­ing him/her for­ever.”  To that end, Mrs. Linger works to bring the best of peo­ple includ­ing youth to their own aware­ness, ulti­mately caus­ing them to self gen­er­ate authen­tic, human­is­tic and syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ships amongst and between peo­ple in the work­place and their wider com­mu­nity; expe­ri­enc­ing lead­er­ship in a way that will cre­ate solu­tions for seem­ingly intractable issues, and help pos­i­tively change and sus­tain human envi­ron­ments and communities.

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