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Serving, Not Helping: Yolanda Shelton-Morris Talks about What Inspired Divine Design and Organization

Yolanda Shelton-Morris MS’16 launched her organizing company, Divine Design and Organization, with the same spirit she learned studying social work at UW–Madison: don’t try to fix people; empower them.

Yolanda Shelton-Morris

“Change is hard for folks,” says Yolanda Shelton-Morris MS’16. She sees it in her work with the city of Madison’s Division of Community Development. She sees it in her academic discipline — she’s a graduate of and teacher in the UW’s Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work. And she sees it in her own business. Shelton-Morris runs Divine Design and Organization, where she’s an organizing consultant.

Change is hard, but Shelton-Morris learned from her social work classes that her job isn’t to change people. Instead, she seeks to empower them to change themselves. “People don’t need our help,” she says. “They need our service. How do we create spaces that allow them to thrive, to be able to have autonomy, to make decisions, to feel like they have some control over their life and their space?”

It’s this principle — serving people so that they can help themselves — that motivated Shelton-Morris to launch Divine Design, and it’s what brings her satisfaction from that work.

Do organizing and social work fit together?

One of my field placement experiences when I was getting my degree in social work was with Child Protective Services. We went out to do a home visit with a family, and one of the conditions that was placed on [the mother if she wanted] to have her children return to her home was to keep her house clean and orderly. We walked in, and she had pushed everything up into a pile in the corner. I remember when we left, another worker that was there with us made a comment about the pile — how maybe the mom could have done a better job of taking care of that. It really stuck with me because I was thinking, “Wow, this mom is faced with losing her children, and I can’t imagine dealing with that trauma and then trying to figure out how to make my house be more organized.”

What inspired you to create Divine Design?

It aligns perfectly with my zodiac sign. I’m a Virgo, and we’re organized and seek perfection. For me, organization is a therapeutic — being able to take things out of a space, look at them, and then put them back in a more organized, systematic way. I found myself doing that for family members and friends. And that is how Divine Design and Organization was born. I go into people’s homes and office spaces and help them declutter and get rid of what to them may seem like chaos.

What do you see as your purpose?

For me, it is about helping folks create a space that brings them joy — a space that brings them less anxiety or stress [and] creating a space of organization and cleanliness. I’m not a cleaner. It’s helping folks build a puzzle, starting with removing everything, looking at the space, talking to them about what they want the space to look like. And then coming up with strategies about how we address that.

What are your clients like?

I do residences. I do kitchens, basements, garages, offices, closets, all different types of things. I’m very intentional about the jobs that I take because I want to make sure I have time to really pour into it the way that it needs to be poured into.

What is the most common problem your clients face?

Most times, by the time people come to me, they’re just overwhelmed. They really don’t know what to do and don’t know where to start.

What does your future hold?

I’m getting my doctorate. I’m in a program that is specifically focused on leadership and teaching. For me, it’s about elevating my skills, my experiences, my knowledge in those areas. I’m not really sure what I want to do after I get my doctorate.

What’s in the future for Divine Design?

My hope is one day to contract with a child welfare agency or human services agency that works with families. I want to give families strategies for how to take a space that may be a little chaotic and organize it. That’s my dream.

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