Founder-Executive Director
Chicago Native, Entrepreneur and Humanitarian, Sherry Singer has always connected with helping people. From an early age, Sherry learned about collective living from her mother Eva, a Holocaust survivor who moved to Israel and served in the Israeli Army on a Kibbutz. Years later, Sherry would spend a period of her own young life living as a Kibbutznik. That formative experience would shape her entire life and cement her inner drive to push people to strive to be better versions of themselves.
Sherry began her career as a fitness and aerobic instructor at her parent’s health clubs in Chicago. When her family decided to open their business in Hawaii, Sherry joined them in running the new location in Honolulu, while simultaneously studying broadcast journalism. She helped grow the business and became their top sales and customer service liaison, interacting daily with customers to provide them with whatever was necessary to help them achieve their personal fitness goals. While living in Honolulu, she was also hired by a matchmaker to use her interpersonal sales skills in the matchmaking arena. At 22, she was not only assisting people in developing healthier lifestyles, but was helping people find their soul mates. Soon after, Sherry returned to the mainland and co-founded her own matchmaking company with her mother. Meet-A-Mate opened its doors in 1995 and was responsible for over 700 marriages, and by 2000, Sherry landed her own radio show for CBS called ‘The Mating Game.’ She became a sought after expert lecturer on the topic, regularly speaking at Pepperdine University, and appeared on numerous reality television shows like the legendary Joan Rivers’s, ‘Joan Knows Best’ (WE network), ‘Scott Baio is 45 and Still Single’ (VH1), and ’Rob and Big’ (MTV).
Still, Sherry felt she had a larger purpose ahead of her, and in 2004, while on her way to a high school graduation Ronald Regan’s funeral procession crossed her path. Since Reagan had been a strong believer of deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill which led to added homelessness in California and eventually nationwide, a seed of an idea was born. Could she take the same skills that helped her impassion people toward better health and quality relationships and apply them to problems on a national scale when dealing with the homeless? She began the exhaustive years of intense research on mental health particularly as it pertained to the homeless and our veterans. The result of that research is Sherry’s Ark.