Dena Spanos-Hawkey

Dena Spanos Hawkey has seven decades of life and experiences as an active and engaged person in the communities she has lived in, while emphasizing compassionate service to children and adults in need. She has over twenty years managing nonprofit organizations and providing literacy services for children and adults.

Dena’s career began “BK” (before kids) as the educational director of two Headstart programs in Cleveland, Ohio. Beginning in 1974, Dena took a long break to raise her three children. Moving to Pasadena, she worked on political campaigns and began working in Pasadena managing literacy and ESL services for South Pasadena, Arcadia and Monrovia libraries. She was hired at Kaiser Permanente as a project manager implementing an early literacy program of Reach Out and Read in the medical pediatric clinics in Southern California.

 Dena has been a trainer and a speaker at numerous conferences.  She is a former board member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Western Region and a former board member of the Pasadena YWCA. For more than 10 years, Dena has been a devoted volunteer and supporter of Friends In Deed’s Food Pantry.

Dena is the daughter of Greek immigrants and did not speak English until kindergarten. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and secured her BA degree from Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. She loves cooking and baking, travel, reading, weight training and fitness, and writing family histories and memory books

 Dena is a loving and active mother of three children and grandmother to six grandchildren. She is a resident of Pasadena with her husband of 56 years, Philip Hawkey.