Practitioner Profiles

Urban Alchemy: Director of Training, Loving Louie

Urban Alchemy is proud to showcase the work of our supervisors and practitioners in our “Focus on the Work” series.

(4 min read)

Director Lou leading a training session for UA Practitioners.

Louie Hammond Quick Facts

• Typical Work Day: “Typical workday begins with me pulling up at Golden Gate and Larkin Street to say hello and good morning to all of our unhoused neighbors. I then get the cleaning supplies and I clean up the street of Golden Gate between Hyde and Larkin. I then come into our office to do a morning meeting to discuss our plans for the day/week. I then train new employees in our core training 101 Orientation 102 De-Escalation 103 Sexual Harassment, 104 Safety and Service, Paycom Training, and Narcan Training.”
• The most rewarding part of the job: “The interpersonal relationships that I develop. Having an opportunity to give back to my community and knowing that we are making a difference in individual lives.”
• The most challenging part of the job: “The Trauma that I see and the pain I feel in my heart for my community.”
• Story Untold: “Two years ago, I met a very nice unhoused neighbor. She started to trust me and share her feelings and hardships of being on the streets. She had confided in me that a few months prior she was raped and her little puppy was stolen. She was crying as she shared this horrific event. As a practitioner of restorative justice and an expert in victim awareness, I helped her process the trauma. We worked on the individual justice needs of victimization. I brought her a blue pit bull puppy. I told her to love the puppy and that when he got bigger, he would protect her. She and her new dog are a family now. She later obtained housing and then got sick, but she didn’t have any family so they took the dog to the pound. When she got out of the hospital, she wanted her baby back but couldn’t afford to get her puppy out of shelter, and they had charged her for his surgery (pit bulls have to be neutered in SF). She found me and we went to get her dog out. To see her cry tears of joy for her puppy made my day and touched me.

Leading From the Front

“I lead from the front,” is the mantra Louie brings to his work at Urban Alchemy. After rejoining society in 2017, he first linked up with founder and CEO Dr. Lena Miller at a program she was leading in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.

“Dr. Miller is my boss, but she’s also a mentor and a friend,” says Louie. And so, when she went on to found Urban Alchemy, Louie knew he had to be a part of the organization. He began by helping around the group’s “Pit Stop” public restrooms located throughout San Francisco.

But it wasn’t before long that Louie was entrusted with his own site at Civic Center — a part of the city where officials, business leaders and movers and shakers meet. “It’s a high-profile assignment, and where I became deputy supervisor. A leader at Urban Alchemy had been watching how I interact with folks in the community. It’s a great lesson that I use these days. We’re all on our best behavior when the boss shows up, but you get to see a person’s integrity and leadership based on how they treat people who can’t give them a promotion or preferred assignment.”

Lou assisting an unhoused resident in San Francisco.

After supervising several Pit Stop sites throughout the city, where he often had to train up new staff quickly, Urban Alchemy provided Louie with his greatest challenge — and most rewarding role yet: leading the Urban Alchemy Academy. Today, Louie is charged with directing the organization’s training program and ensuring that all Practitioners receive the proper education and guidance that will prepare them for the challenges they’ll face on the street working inside underserved communities.

“When I say that I lead from the front, I mean that I would not ask a Practitioner to do something that I am not prepared to step in and do myself. Leader is not a title, but a mindset that any person can have,” explained Louie.

Louie believes that many Practitioners are driven by a need to make amends for damage they’ve done to to their communities and shares that one of his greatest personal achievements is knowing he took part in more than 200 overdose reversals using Narcan.

When asked about the future he’d like to see at Urban Alchemy, Louie believes the group won’t just see geographic growth but also an expansion of what Practitioners can do for the community:

“I look at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Intervention as the keys to addressing traumas that act as triggers for both our Practitioners and folks in our communities,” continued Louie. “What I see is that we have an opportunity to address this problem and really focus on transforming trauma instead of transferring it. We can break free from negative cycles and act intentionally.”