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Columbus CEO’s CEO of the Year 2024: Oyauma Garrison Taps a Passion for Service at Maryhaven
By Shannon Shelton Miller
Columbus CEO
During his two decades as an insurance executive, Oyauma Garrison never hesitated to give back to the community. Volunteering, leading boards, raising funds and joining civic organizations was just as important to him as climbing the corporate ladder.
Still, Garrison says he never considered a career in the nonprofit sector until his daughter Mya became critically ill in 2016. He says the experience made him rethink his life’s direction.
“I wanted to wakeq up every morning knowing I was doing some level of good, and that was helping people and moving the community forward,” says Garrison, Columbus CEO’s 2024 CEO of the Year winner in the Large Nonprofit category. “As much as I appreciated having a great career in insurance, I felt I needed to ground myself again in my family.”
The next year, Garrison became CEO and national president of A Kid Again, a nonprofit dedicated to providing fun and memorable experiences for children with life-threatening health issues. He led the organization for almost five years before leaving in 2022 to become president and CEO of Maryhaven Inc., a 360-employee nonprofit that serves more than 15,000 individuals each year, helping them overcome addiction and mental health challenges through education, treatment and support.
Garrison says he was impressed by the organization’s history, work and community impact, but didn’t think his own background connected much with mental health. Then he thought about life with his father, a Vietnam veteran who struggled with heroin and alcohol addiction after serving his country.
“It was at that moment I realized I did have a connection because of my father’s experience,” Garrison says. “I remember being a kid attending an AA meeting with him and learning the AA prayer. I think a natural progression took place, and I now know this is where I’m intended to be. Most importantly, I say it’s an opportunity to do God’s work.”
In late 2022, the organization opened the Residence at Maryhaven, a 30-bed residential community where adults can continue their treatment and counseling for up to six months and also receive other support services.
When Garrison moved to the nonprofit sector, he found multiple similarities to his experience in the corporate world. Maryhaven is a $36 million nonprofit, and nonprofits and corporations alike have a mission, vision and organizational and operational complexities, Garrison says. In addition to storytelling, he recognizes the importance of communicating Maryhaven’s impact in numbers, noting how quantitative data makes an organization’s impact “real” to potential supporters in the business community.
What nonprofits lacked, Garrison soon discovered, was resources. They didn’t have separate departments with multiple employees dedicated to marketing, programming or other operations he’d grown to expect in the corporate world. That’s why he turned to the relationships he’d built over the years in Central Ohio, often securing significant financial commitments and volunteer hours from major corporations for his organizations’ goals.
“You’d be surprised at the number of people willing to raise their hands to help organizations like ours,” Garrison says. “Often, they just don’t get asked.”
Garrison’s ability to make connections impressed Jeffrey Damron, founder and past CEO of A Kid Again. When Garrison took the reins as CEO, Damron says he appreciated how Garrison worked with him while he remained involved with the organization, and how Garrison grew the nonprofit from its Ohio roots to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in less than five years.
“I saw his passion to serve others and how he always put families first,” Damron says. “He also brought a ton of incredible resources to the organization—not just in terms of funds but relationships, as well. He’s just incredible.”