Cheri Oliveri

Cheri Oliveri pursued her education in early childhood education and business. She was a preschool teacher for many years, has vast experience in real estate management, and has successfully partnered in building and ultimately managing multiple multi-million dollar businesses from the ground up. Currently, she is VP of Operations at Oliveri and Associates, LLC, and Founder and President of a newer company, Lifehax, LLC.

As an adult and a professional, she is dedicated to giving back. Since its start, she has volunteered countless hours and been a Board member of the Standish Foundation for Children and Family-Centered Healthcare. Additionally, she sits on other Boards for which she volunteers:  LTlov, the Young Men's Service League, PTO/PTA, her HOA, Christ Episcopal Church Day School, and volunteers such places as Believe in Tomorrow and her local Retirement community; she also encourages her children to give and serve.

Mrs. Oliveri’s family includes her loving and supportive husband, six children, and a couple of grandchildren, and she understands, perhaps better than most, the importance of child and family-centered care and how difficult traumatic situations can be when it is absent. Her two oldest daughters have undergone three brain surgeries between them due to both having Chiari Malformation with Syringomyelia. Additionally, at a young age, Mrs. Oliveri’s son was diagnosed with a high-functioning form of autism.

There was a time when Mrs. Oliveri was a single parent struggling to set up payment plans to secure treatment for her children. Her background has left her full of compassion and the desire to take her past and turn it into a positive for others.

Mrs. Oliveri describes her daughters’ brain surgeries as life-altering. She experienced first-hand how hospital staff, including doctors and nurses, viewed their responsibilities simply as day jobs, the sterile environment, and lack of warmth, communication, and nurturing, and she knew instinctively there was a need to address how children experience healthcare. She knew children, her children, deserved to feel safe and unafraid when going to a hospital, staying in a hospital, and facing the unknown. She also understood wholeheartedly how crucial open communication is between doctors, nurses, and parents.  She often uses the hospital Labor and Delivery as an example of how nurturing staff seem to be and the rooms designed with a “home” feel.  Arguably, this is one hospital area where joyful experiences are anticipated.  Mrs. Oliveri would like to see the same care and dedication that expecting mother and their families experience for children in the hospital.

Mrs. Oliveri has taken those experiences and turned them into a passion for serving, and she has made a difference. Today, her daughters are grown and doing well—one wants to be in the medical field to help other children.

The Oliveri Family once spent much of the year in Annapolis to be close to Johns Hopkins, where Dr. Ben Carson has performed all three of the girls’ brain surgeries. However, Mrs. Oliveri and her husband, a University of Texas graduate and Texas-born, love Austin and are, once again, able to make it their full-time home, along with their older children and their youngest child.