Rachel Lustig, MPA, is a passionate anti-poverty strategist and an innovative, health and human services growth leader. Rachel has served as president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio (LSS) since May 2023. Lutheran Social Services (LSS) is a faith-based, health and human services agency that serves thousands of people every day through housing, health care, and emergency assistance programs that serve the whole person and respond to some of our community’s most serious challenges. Founded in 1912, LSS is one of Central Ohio’s largest non-profit organizations and takes a leadership role in responding to the challenges that face people experiencing poverty and/or homelessness, seniors, and victims/survivors of domestic violence. Driven by faith, we continue our mission of creating a better world by serving people in need by responding to our community’s evolving unmet needs with dignity and respect while providing compassionate, professional care.
In her first year, Rachel led the development of a vision and plan for LSS to drive the next 10 years of service to the community. In our pursuit to create a better world, LSS’ strategic goal is to be a leader providing high-quality, impactful housing, health care, and emergency assistance programs that serve the whole person, while collaborating and advocating to positively transform the environment surrounding people we serve. This drives our efforts toward quality services and outcomes grounded in evidence-based, trauma-informed, and strengths-based practice. It guides our collaborative efforts that allow us to build off the strengths of other private, public, and nonprofit partners and guides LSS to advocate for community solutions that serve our client populations and strengthen communities.
Prior to LSS, Rachel served as president and CEO of Catholic Social Services Columbus since July 2013. In a decade, Rachel transformed the agency, building on its legacy, and bringing it into its strategic niche. Under Rachel’s leadership, Catholic Social Services responded to the rapidly growing senior population—serving 100% more seniors by scaling CSS’ low-cost, high-impact programs through more effective technology solutions, volunteer engagement, and partnership. Similarly, understanding the increasing pressure on working-poor adults, Rachel renewed CSS’ focus on helping people who are trying to build better lives for themselves, but who are balancing the complicated and interrelated challenges of poverty. Rachel led the transformation of a food pantry serving primarily Hispanic families into the Our Lady of Guadalupe Center, which now provides holistic services to help one of Columbus’ fastest-growing immigrant communities break the cycle of poverty.
Before joining Catholic Social Services, Rachel was a senior executive at Catholic Charities USA, the nation’s largest private human service association. In that role, Rachel advanced innovative, impactful, and collaborative best-practice strategies, and she helped seed the nation’s first domestic poverty research lab at her alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. Under her leadership, CSS engaged in multiple research initiatives with the university to rigorously evaluate programs for their effectiveness and scalability.
Twenty years of anti-poverty experience has helped Rachel understand the complicated nature of poverty, commonly understood as the Social Determinants (or Influences) of Health, and she has been successful in bringing partners together to address some of the community’s most pressing needs systematically. Driven to this purpose, Rachel has held numerous leadership roles, including that Rachel served as chair of the Human Service Chamber of Franklin County in 2020-21.
Rachel has been named a finalist for Columbus Magazine’s CEO of the Year for a Large Nonprofit, the inaugural Health & Humanity Champion by the Human Service Chamber, a Woman WELDing the Way by Women for Economic and Leadership Development (WELD), a 40 Under 40 by Columbus Business First, and one of “12 Catholic Women under 40 Making a Difference,” by National Catholic Reporter.
Rachel lives and leads Lutheran Social Services in the belief that hope comes alive when people believe that the future can be better than the present and that they have a role in shaping that future. Rachel and LSS’ most vital role is to fan that hopefulness.