YWCA Chief Getting Out of the Pool

After a 21-year association with the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles, Laura S. Wiltz is retiring. Since 1991, she has served as the Y’s chief executive, and will continue as a consultant after her retirement.

Reflecting on the last two decades, Wiltz said, “My involvement grows out of the YWCA’s mission--the empowerment of women and girls and the elimination of racism.

“The association is a player in advocating harmonious race relations and has grown in the number of services, such as day care and breast cancer screening, that it has been able to provide and the number of people it has reached,” she said.

The board of directors and friends of the YWCA are holding a reception for Wiltz on Tuesday at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown L.A. “Her accomplishments are bountiful, her knowledge of the YWCA--both local and national--is unrivaled, and her passion for the mission without question,” said Gayle Greenwood, president of the YWCA board of directors.

Wiltz said she and her husband, Ellsworth “Fritz” Wiltz, plan to do some traveling. “I’ve been married to the same man for 37 years, and he’s been retired for four years and waiting for me to retire,” she said.

The first trip is already planned--Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

Wiltz says she’s “moving on to new venues” rather than retiring. And, “I am serving in a management consultant role for the YWCA USA, so I will be available in California, Nevada and Hawaii to assist in any way I can to strengthen the operations.”

Wiltz, who has a doctorate in organizational behavior and science from the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, became a Y volunteer in 1978 and joined the staff in 1989 as its chief operating officer.

She serves as secretary and chairwoman of the Neighborhood Networks Committee for the city of Los Angeles’ Commission for Children, Youth & Families, and as an advisory council member for Southern California Edison and the University of Judaism Nonprofit Management Program.

Her extensive community service earned her the Black Woman of Achievement Award from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1996.

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Southland Industries, Long Beach, has donated a Starlight Children’s Foundation Fun Center--a mobile unit with color monitor, video games and VCR--to Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA in Westwood. The Starlight Foundation grants wishes to children with life-threatening diseases.