Anne Rieck McFarland

from 2018 Honors Ceremony Magazine

Tom Loveland

PROFESSIONAL | NONPROFIT

Sioux Falls, SD

Empowering Children & Adults with Disabilities

Innovative. Inspiring. Inquisitive. Inclusive. These are just a few of the adjectives used to describe Anne Rieck McFarland, long-time leader and advocate for people with disabilities. It is a life’s work that began by chance with a part-time job at the Aberdeen Adjustment Training Center while Anne attended Northern State College in the 1970’s.

“I grew up on a farm near Warner about 25 miles from

Aberdeen,” Anne explains. “Nine guys lived in the group home, and we’d drive them out to the farm about once a week. They just loved it, we all did!”

The farm had much to do with shaping Anne’s character, instincts and work ethic.

“I thought I had a pretty ordinary childhood,” Anne recalls. “But, looking back, it was rather extraordinary. We had certain chores to do at certain ages, and that instilled confidence and the ability to work independently. I learned how to drive a twoton truck before I knew how to do laundry!”

Anne was the third of four children born to Harley and Jean Rieck. While Harley ran the farm, Jean was the school’s Business Manager and rode the school bus to work every day. It was uncommon in those days for a wife/mother to work outside the home, but Anne and her siblings thought nothing of riding the bus with their mom. To the Rieck family, work was more about capability than gender. “I have never thought of ‘glass ceilings’ when it comes to my career,” Anne observes. “But that can be a different matter for people with disabilities. It generally comes from a lack of understanding, and that is my wake-up call to educate and inform. I have learned that you can’t lead if nobody is following.”

Anne graduated from Northern in 1977 with a B.A. in Community Services and Early Childhood Development. Rather than open the small day care business she envisioned when starting college, Anne took her newfound passion to the Mitchell Adjustment Training Center where she was named support person of the year within two years. Career opportunities then took her to Muscatine and Burlington, IA.

By 1987, now married and a mom, Anne was ready to move her family closer to home. She sent a “To Whom It May Concern” letter to Sioux Vocational Services in Sioux Falls, and the rest is history. Anne was hired for her first administrative position focused on development and human resources. She excelled at Sioux Vocational and, in 1996, became the first woman to lead the organization which was rebranded as South Dakota Achieve.

The agency became the first of its kind in South Dakota to be nationally accredited and continues to this day the distinction of holding the longest Council on Quality and Leadership accreditation in the nation.

“I didn’t aspire to the position at the time, but I learned that my gifts lend themselves more toward CEO.” Anne continues, “A few years later, I attended a workshop where I had another a-ha moment. People there didn’t see nonprofits as a credible business, and I found that insulting. We do much of the same work but for a different purpose.”

She set out to change that perception. Anne created a leadership development program at Achieve, something she continues to lead more than two decades later. “Developing people is one of my passions. I believe the greatest gift you can leave behind is people well positioned to use their talents. The beauty of investing in others has become one of the blessings in my 40 years of service.”

This extends into Anne’s community, too, where she has served on more than two dozen civic and professional boards, continues to mentor young female executives through EmBe’s Women’s Leadership Program, and is a regular panelist for Leadership Sioux Falls and the Young Professionals Network. “I like being in a community where good things happen, where I can give back and contribute in ways that are important to me. A good community allows organizations to do good work.”

Today, the nonprofit Anne was chosen to lead has grown to become a Top 10 Employer in Sioux Falls

with more than 1,200 employees and a $60 million annual budget. South Dakota Achieve merged with Children’s Care Hospital & School in 2014 to create LifeScape, an agency dedicated to empowering children and adults with disabilities to lead fulfilling lives. Almost 4,000 children, adults and families are supported annually through one of LifeScape’s 13 different service lines.

“The responsibilities and consequences of embarking on LifeScape were riskier than anything I have ever considered,” Anne reflects. “To know that hundreds of lives were being impacted made me stop in my tracks. We had to put corporate egos on the shelf to focus on what could happen instead of what could go wrong.” Doing business differently is more than just a buzzword at LifeScape. From that merger came a new leadership team and a model of synergy that Anne says can apply to any nonprofit or for-profit organization.

Anne Rieck McFarland doesn’t see her Induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame as a personal achievement in so much as it validates the work that she represents. “Leading a nonprofit organization, one of the largest in South Dakota, that so happens to advocate for people with disabilities. Finally, our profession is being recognized for its influence and impact across the state.”

NOMINATED BY JOHN ROZELL & JACK HOPKINS

NICHOLAS BLACK ELK

VIRGINIA DRIVING HAWK SNEEVE

JAMES EMERY

CHIEF SOLOMON IRON NATION

CHIEF RED CLOUD

THOMAS SHORTBULL

CHARLES TRIMBLE

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