John Wilhelm: President & CEO

John’s work with abused and neglected children goes back many years. While serving as missionaries in Eastern Europe in the early 1990’s, John and his wife Katy worked with orphans in several former East Bloc nations. They supported the restoration of dilapidated, former-communist orphanages and visited and loved on orphans infected with HIV. John has been active in working with abused and neglected children in San Antonio since his family returned from the mission field in 2005.

John brings a broad knowledge of the child welfare system and has many years of experience in working for faith-based foster care and adoption agencies. He is passionate about finding quality families to care for children in need and providing those families with the support and training that will make them succeed.

He co-founded 1HOPE because he wholeheartedly embraces the vision, which is to create a partnership of individuals, churches, corporations, government agencies and foundations committed to creating community solutions for the modern-day orphan (foster children). In his spare time (whenever he has any), John enjoys going on nature walks with his wife or watching action movies with his boys.