SF's Maitri hospice hires new ED
There comes a time in a person's life when they've done what they needed to do and they want, instead, to do what they're passionate about.
Michael Armentrout has reached that point.In January, Armentrout, a gay West Virginia native, was hired as executive director of Maitri Compassionate Care, a 35-year-old organization providing hospice, short-term respite care, and recovery support following gender affirmation surgery, in the Castro's Duboce Triangle neighborhood."It's an exciting organization," he told the Bay Area Reporter in a phone interview, "and I'm over the moon about the mission."For Armentrout, 65, who described himself as a "mission-driven kind of guy," Maitri was a natural progression, he said, after doing HIV care and education for much of his life.
Sixteen years ago, when he moved to San Francisco from Washington, D.C., he began working at the AIDS Emergency Fund then the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund. (AEF has since merged with PRC and is now called Emergency Financial Assistance.
BCEF remains a nonprofit agency.) Like many gay men of his generation, Armentrout witnessed the deaths of many friends and acquaintances during the darkest years of the AIDS pandemic.
