Service Spotlight: Adebanke Faleke

15 Oct Service Spotlight: Adebanke Faleke

Adebanke Faleke has a unique perspective of New Hope of Indiana and our mission. She has served as both a Direct Support Professional (DSP) in Day Service and AIM and, as of September, as a Behavior Consultant. We wanted to learn more about how Adebanke made such a drastic transition and why she chose to stick with New Hope in this new phase of her career.

Adebanke is originally from Nigeria, West Africa where she earned her Bachelors in Theatre from the University of Lagos. She later moved to the US where she is now a citizen. She earned a Master’s degree in Social Work from Indiana University School of Social Work. Adebanke gained experience as a therapist with clients on probation and DCS referrals. While this experience was invaluable to her, when an opening in New Hope’s Behavior department became available, Adebanke was excited to apply. She hoped to find a better work life balance at New Hope than she had at other jobs, and the best part for Adebanke is that she gets to work with a population she loves. She said, “I always felt fulfillment working at New Hope.” Taking the Behavior Consultant job just made sense to her.

To get to know Adebanke a little better, we asked her some questions.

What’s your family like? My family values include respect, honesty, spirituality, excellence, and hard work to mention a few.

Describe yourself in less than 10 words: I am caring, creative, hardworking, flexible and dependable.

What brought you to New Hope? I worked as a teacher for 5 years before coming to New Hope. My work as a teacher exposed me to some of the challenges some of my students who have some type of a disability faced. It hurt that I could not help them as much as I could. I then decided to go back to school, and to find a career in an organization that served individuals with disabilities.

What are you most passionate about? I am passionate about impacting lives in a positive way.

What’s your dream job? I am doing my dream job.

What are your hobbies? I enjoy swimming, listening to music, and watching movies.

What are your professional values? My professional values include responsibility, strong work ethic, professionalism, and integrity.

If you could have a meal with one historical figure or celebrity who would you choose and why? It would be Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is constantly learning, always asking questions, looking at things in a new way, and successful in her career and entire television network. One of her favorite quotes I like is, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”

You accidentally wake the genie from the lamp. What’s your first wish? I wish everyone in the world would get to have one positive wish come true. That will make the world a better place.

Favorite family tradition? Decorating our Christmas tree, attending church service called a watch night service from December 31 to January 1st to usher in the new year, and visiting family out of state during the holidays.

What’s something that made you smile recently? Something that made me smile recently was the thought of my journey so far and how I ended up doing what I wanted to do, working with the population I wanted to serve and also having a prior relationship with some of the clients I work with in my new role.

What has been the hardest part of COVID/social distancing? The hardest part is that awkward feeling of not being able to hug my friends when I see them. The mask makes it hard to share a smile and I miss being able to see my friends in AIM and Day Services.

What’s something on your bucket list? Ride a bike (don’t know how to ride a bike but taught my kids to ride without training wheels. Don’t tell anyone please!), visit Disney World (was supposed to go this year but COVID changed my plans), and be in the Oprah Winfrey live audience.