A young man sitting behind steel doors in a secure treatment facility once told Nicholas Hill something that rearranged his life. The teenager, recovering from a suicide attempt, studied Hill during weeks of one-on-one supervision and finally said: "You seem like you really care. If you truly care, I don't think you should work here." He told Hill about a place called Bethany Children's Home, a campus in southeastern Pennsylvania where kids slept in real bedrooms, ate meals in kitchens, lived in something called cottages, not units, and decorated their own walls in their bedrooms. The young man had lived there before trouble pulled him away. He remembered what it felt like to be treated like a person.
Hill went home that night, searched the name, found an open position, and applied. He was hired as a cottage support staff, the entry-level role, no supervisory authority, working shifts on the floor alongside the youth. That was eleven and a half years ago. Today, Hill is stepping into the 16th President and CEO position of Bethany Children's Home, unanimously appointed by the Board of Directors without a national search. The young man who pointed him there? He eventually returned to Bethany, completed the program, and left as a functioning young adult. Hill wrote about the experience in an organization newsletter called The Echo. He still considers it one of the defining chapters of his career.
A Legacy Measured in Centuries, Not Quarters
Bethany Children's Home has operated continuously since 1863, when orphans from the Civil War would step off a train running along the base of campus, walk to the administration building, and sign their names in a ledger. It is among the oldest child welfare organizations in the United States and one of the few remaining congregate care facilities in Pennsylvania's Southeast region. Fifteen leaders have overseen the organization across that span, many of them serving two or three decades each. The title was once "Superintendent." The weight of the role has not changed.
Hill is believed to be the first President and CEO in Bethany's history to have started in direct care. That distinction shapes every decision he makes. He remembers his first day on campus, unsure which of the sixteen buildings to walk into. He remembers breaking up his first fight. He remembers working overtime, missing holidays, missing his own family's milestones, and he carries that institutional memory deliberately, not as sentimentality but as operational intelligence. "I didn't just pop into a suit and an office," Hill says. "I know the work it took to get here, and I don't want to forget the people who helped me get here or the kids who taught me a million life lessons about resilience, grit, and what a real problem looks like compared to an inconvenience."
The Children Behind the Mission
The population Bethany serves has transformed over its 163-year history. Civil War orphans gave way to court-ordered placements through children and youth agencies and juvenile probation systems. The children who arrive now carry immense trauma: neglect, abuse and exploitation. Many have been trafficked. Some don't recognize what happened to them until they're sitting across from a counselor and something clicks. Hill recounts conversations with teenagers who never understood that the things done to them were wrong, who believed that what they endured was what love looked like because an adult told them so.
Hill and his leadership team train team members to identify the warning signs of trafficking and teach the children how to recognize danger in their own lives. He is blunt about the gap between public perception and reality: this is not the plot of an action film. It is a grandmother exploiting a grandchild at a theme park. It is a parent using a child to settle a debt. It happens in every school district, every income bracket, in broad daylight. His message to the public is plain: report what you see, do not investigate it yourself, and understand that over-reporting is always safer than silence.
One young woman currently in Bethany's care experienced severe trauma within her family and became a mother as a result. She is, by any measure, still a child herself. Her supervised visits with her baby happen on campus. Hill watches her pull a lollipop from the front desk candy bin to hand to her toddler, read to her, and introduce her to the staff. "We're not just healing one person," he says. "We're trying to develop young people who are going to be the next politician, the next police officer, the next person checking your receipt at Costco. Do we want them to carry anger and resentment into the world, or do we want them on the path to healing?"
Building a Life, Not Just Providing a Bed
If you walk into one of Bethany's residential buildings, you will likely feel you are in a friend's home. Living room furniture, art on the walls, gaming consoles, kitchens with food in the pantries and fridges. Each young person has the autonomy to decorate their bedroom. There is a gym, a weight room, a chapel, art studio, music room, library and immense green space for recreational programming. The environment is designed to produce something specific: normalcy.
Beyond housing, Bethany runs a structured life skills curriculum that begins with a baseline assessment. The logic is practical: no teenager wants to learn something they already know according to Hill. From that assessment, staff identify gaps: balancing a checkbook, filing taxes, changing a light bulb, checking windshield wiper fluid. Youth learn to shop for car insurance. They take college tours. They navigate financial aid documents. A five-thousand-dollar car scholarship helps each qualifying youth purchase their first vehicle. Hill recalls telling a young person that he has never once used the Pythagorean theorem in his professional life, but he files his taxes every single year.
The program also addresses what Hill calls the deeper architecture of adulthood: trust, relationships, identity. Healthy relationship workshops run in partnership with community organizations. Sex education is delivered without naivety. Sportsmanship is treated as a transferable skill. Young people are told, plainly, that they will walk through Bethany's doors alone and leave alone and that the time between those two moments belongs entirely to them. "Their whole life, they've been told what they can and can't do," Hill says. "Giving them autonomy to feel like their life is their life. That's where real healing starts."
The Family That Keeps Coming Back
One of Bethany's current supervisors was a child on campus when Hill was still working direct care. She likes to remind him. A member of the board of directors, Dr. Anderson, grew up in the program. The board president herself was raised on campus, her father served as president and CEO, and she lived in one of the buildings for over two decades. Alumni help contribute to the organization's historical archives. A young man currently renting space on the property after completing the program works in child welfare for another agency and is, by Hill's account, counting down the days until the five-year post-discharge waiting period expires so he can apply to work at Bethany.
Hill frames this pattern not as a recruitment strategy but as proof of concept. "They leave only to work their way back," he says. "That tells you something about what we built here." He is careful not to overstate results. Not every child stays connected. Some vanish into adulthood and the staff never hear from them again, which Hill acknowledges is one of the harder parts of the job. But the ones who return; as employees, board members, volunteers, and advocates represent a throughline that no annual report can quantify.
Inside the organization, Hill has cultivated a culture of mutual accountability that mirrors what he asks of the children. Staff are expected to show up for each other on their worst days. Weaknesses are not catalogued; strengths are built upon. Hill still walks into the residential buildings unannounced, sits in his office with the door open, and tells every young person the same thing: there are nearly two hundred adults on this campus willing to show up at your school, your job or in a court room to make sure your voice gets heard.
Sustaining the Mission
Bethany Children's Home has survived depressions, financial crises, and the chronic underfunding that defines American Human Services. County, state, and federal dollars cover a portion of operating costs, but Hill is candid about the arithmetic: the work that makes Bethany distinct; the life skills programming, the car scholarships, the college tours, the bedding for every new arrival, is funded, almost entirely by private donors. When state budgets stall in Harrisburg or Washington, payments stop. The children do not.
Hill has joined a broader advocacy effort to reclassify congregate care organizations as essential services, placing them alongside law enforcement, first responders, and hospital staff who continue to receive funding during budget impasses. "If we want the future to be bright," he says, "This is where to put your support."
What Remains
When asked what he wants readers to take away, Hill's answer is unembellished. No one's past defines who they are. The support of a community, or even one person, can change the trajectory of a life. One gift, one acknowledgment, one moment of genuine recognition can be the thing that elevates someone toward something they never thought possible.
He is still early in his leadership chapter, presiding over a 163-year-old institution on a campus where children once arrived by train, and he got here because a teenager in a locked facility told him he was too compassionate to stay behind steel doors.
