About Us

Our Mission

To create healing spaces that offer connection, advocacy, and support services and lead to the promotion of hope, inspiration, faith, and community.

Who We Are

Smile Ministry’s mission is to bestow a crown of beauty, the oil of joy, and a garment of praise. This is achieved by creating healing spaces for individuals through connections, support, and advocacy. Our core values are:

Accountability

Acknowledging the responsibility and impact of one’s decisions and taking action to repair any harm they may have inflicted.

Wellness

Nurturing a life of making healthy choices and practicing daily healthy habits to improve one’s physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Patience

Accepting suffering without annoyance to accommodate healing.

Shahmet is the best. Shahmet is the best. Shahmet is the best.

Leadership

Kisha Arthur-Fontenelle, Executive Director & Coach

Kisha is the founder of Smile Ministry. Her areas of expertise are organizational effectiveness, change, and people management. She is the former Director of Operations at Equal Justice USA and has over 15 years of experience implementing strong administrative structures, policies, and procedures for rapidly growing nonprofits. Prior to EJUSA, Kisha helped implement the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions’ strategic vision. Passionate about women’s empowerment, Kisha contributed to the founding of the NPower Women’s Initiative, a program committed to engaging girls and women in tech. She holds a master’s of science degree in organizational leadership from Nyack College, and a bachelor’s in psychology from Hunter College.

Shahmet Gordon, President

Shahmet is the Chief Financial Officer at National Employment (NELP), where she is responsible for the financial health and sustainability of the organization, including overseeing financial operations, driving strategic resource planning, and building strong systems of internal controls and fiscal accountability.

Shahmet aligns her financial expertise with advocacy by focusing on the nonprofit sector. This intersection has allowed her to contribute meaningfully to causes she cares deeply about while applying her skills to strengthen the operational and financial health of mission-driven organizations. Prior to joining the NELP team, Shahmet held key managerial positions within the fiscal offices of Equal Justice USA, SAGE, Center Against Domestic Violence, and HIV Law Project.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Shahmet is dedicated to helping people find their voices to empower themselves and their families. She is also a published author who uses her gift of poetry to encourage, uplift, and show others that they are not alone in their struggles.

Kristina Dezendorf, MSW, LMSW, Vice President

Kristina is a Licensed Master of Social Work, a psychotherapist, and the Executive Director of The Baton Rouge Mom Network. Born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she attended LSU for both her undergraduate and graduate education. She is deeply passionate about mental health, community-centered advocacy, and ensuring everyone has what they need to thrive. Kristina has created and led nationally-accredited training programs, community programs, and grassroots nonprofits and projects. She is married and has two beautiful children. In her free time, Kristina enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, creating art, dancing, and watching movies.

John Smart, Treasurer

John continues his career by working with new ventures as a board member of Smile Ministry. He began as an accountant with the Bell System in 1980 and focused on the AT&T divestiture and building the new telecommunications model for the country. His work included re-establishing telephone service between the US and Cuba in 1998, and serving as a founding Board member of Families First, a non-profit Denver, Colorado based crisis service center. After that, John spent eight years at Deloitte to build its global, integrated financial services network. He then joined NPower, a national organization providing technical support and services to non-profits as interim CEO and CFO, before moving to UpClear, a global SaaS provider to the Consumer Packaged Goods industry.

Cynthia Dorsey, Secretary

Cynthia is a resident of Nyack, New York, and a native of White Plains, New York. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Church Administration and a Master of Business Administration in Human Resource Management. Currently, she is on leave from completing her Master of Divinity. Cynthia has served as an Adjunct Professor, Primary Instructor, and Advisor for the MSOL and MBA programs at Nyack College, as well as an adjunct at Monroe College, where she taught Economics, Marketing, and Ethics. In these roles, she helped develop and provide professional career development counseling, advising, and assessment services for various individual and group clients.

Additionally, she served as the Supervising Coordinator of Prison Education for Nyack College and the Hudson Link Higher Educational Initiative. She provided leadership in various correctional facilities to offer academic opportunities for incarcerated individuals. She also worked as an Educational Coordinator for the EmpowerU Youth Empowerment program in Yonkers, NY, where she engaged with troubled teenage males at Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, mentoring and providing life skills training. Currently, she is an adjunct in the Humanities/Fine Arts and Communications Department at Westchester Community College.