Director of Safety George Collins joined Plymouth in 2024 with the goal of creating a new safety office, overseeing the safety and wellbeing of Plymouth residents and staff across all buildings. From the beginning, he has brought a deeply relational approach to this work. Safety, security, and stability have always been core values at Plymouth, and George is finding new ways to infuse those values across the organization.

“Over the past several months, I’ve been working across shifts, on weekends and holidays, to meet with staff so I can get their pulse and be an advocate for what they need to do their jobs,” says George. For him, serving the residents and staff of Plymouth is a calling, and an opportunity to engage every single person involved in the organization. “I spend my time looking at ways and things we can do to keep our staff and residents safe,” he says. “Even though I have all this experience in law enforcement and safety, it can’t happen unless I involve all the stakeholders and bring everyone to the table.”

 

It is tempting to think that leading safety at an organization means standing at the back of a room with a walkie-talkie or patrolling hallways, but George spends much of his time connecting with staff. In his first several months on the job, he estimates he’s had conversations about safety with more than 300 Plymouth staff members across every Plymouth property.

It helps that George is a perceptive and compassionate communicator. “My best assets are people skills: being able to talk to people, engage them, show them a level of trust. That’s what matters to me,” he says. As he builds out new policies and procedures and thinks about how to engage staff and residents across multiple shifts and multiple buildings, getting to know front desk staff has been critical. Every Plymouth building has 24/7 front desk support, and George has focused most on connecting with them. “I’m working with the staff whose boots are on the ground,” he says, “because they are the people with real experiences, with ideas, who see opportunities and who have needs. We can’t move forward without them.”

Before joining Plymouth, George spent many years leading safety for other nonprofits, including Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles and Seattle, and Harborview Medical Center. Serving others has been a major motivator for his career. “Planned Parenthood introduced me to working in nonprofits,” he says. “As a child, I was raised with the attitude of doing something that has a bigger purpose. I have family members who experienced homelessness. Being able to make a small impact on such a serious problem really motivates me.”

 

George’s role also means he works very closely with public safety agencies, including Seattle and Eastside police and fire departments. His own decades-long career in law enforcement, first as a campus police officer and then as a U.S. Marshal, means he understands how officers and leaders may think about their jobs, and how he can work with them to serve residents and neighbors. Once again, it all comes back to communication.

“I work closely with the leaders at the East and West Precincts [of the Seattle Police Department],” says George, “and basically have them on speed dial. We work together to get ahead of issues, and we bring very different approaches that complement each other.” While George’s job is to be proactive in creating a safe and stable environment, law enforcement’s role is generally reactive—to be present after an incident has already happened. So George works with public safety agencies to head off issues before they occur, and to serve as eyes and ears in neighborhood—for instance, he has asked bike patrols to adjust their route to better support community needs.

George also brings a trauma-informed perspective to help ensure that interactions with law enforcement are not harmful to residents. For people who have experienced chronic homelessness, encounters with law enforcement can be traumatic, so George and his team make sure public safety agencies are called in only if necessary while ensuring that Plymouth staff have the tools and training to work with residents to solve problems that may arise.

 

As Plymouth develops new buildings on the Eastside and elsewhere, George is also connecting proactively with law enforcement agencies to build those relationships early in the process. “I’m engaged in robust conversations with law enforcement leadership and officers in Redmond,” he says. “Working closely with their team, and having clear communication channels, is one of the ways we make sure we are establishing ourselves as a good neighbor in this new-to-us community.”

In the remainder of 2024, along with Safety Manager DeAnna Marshall, George plans to roll out new internal policies, finding opportunities for robust partnerships among staff. He will communicate widely about his team’s work, while soliciting feedback and making sure everyone knows how to reach him. George’s goal? “Having staff understand that safety is everyone’s concern, everyone’s job, and making sure they know I’m their advocate. It’s not just DeAnna and myself—we all own safety.”