Our Executive Director

SHELLEY HAM

Rooms of Hope, Executive Director

Shelley Ham brings a wealth of experience in nonprofit work, as well as a sincere love for design and children, especially those with unique needs. Shelley has been involved with nonprofit organizations such as Make-A-Wish, The Lymphoma & Leukemia Society, the United States Olympic Committee, and most recently, another nonprofit company that supports creating children’s dream rooms. In just three years with this organization, Shelley and her San Francisco Bay Area team of more than two hundred volunteers designed and created over thirty dream room makeovers for children with life-threatening medical illnesses. In addition, Shelley’s in-depth understanding that the entire family is impacted when a child is diagnosed with a serious illness, led her and her team to create another forty-five dream sibling spaces, and two whole-home makeovers, when circumstances were necessary to do so. Most recently, Shelley, her husband and Nathan & Melissa Bennett, made Rooms of Hope possible in 2014 to create a local charity with a local Board of Directors to better serve the children of the Bay Area. Since then, each year, Rooms of Hope proudly supports nearly twenty Rooms of Hope children by creating their amazing dream spaces to heal in, supports another 30 to 40 siblings by creating spaces that matter for them too, and provides the occasional home makeover when it is critical we do so for the Rooms of Hope child and their family.

Shelley has lived in the Bay Area her whole life, and she loves the culture and people that make up this diverse area. Shelley’s background in nonprofit work, along with her experience in for-profit work, has armed her with the knowledge she needs to manage a thriving organization. Along with being the Executive Director of Rooms of Hope and the former Bay Area Chapter Director of another nonprofit business, she was also the President of a for-profit firm serving the needs of more than 50,000 individuals with her staff of over 400 people. Shelley’s need to make a difference is why Rooms of Hope is her perfect fit!

After creating her first dream room makeover in 2009 with Make-A-Wish, for a very special young lady with an aggressive form of cancer, she knew that this was her calling. “Seeing her eyes filled with hope when she saw her room for the first time was so gratifying. I’m inspired to do better in the world when I see how brave and fearless these children are in their world. Designing dream rooms and more is simply my way of creating rooms of hope for these very special people that I’m privileged to know.”