Meg Zaletel named to Anchorage Chamber’s ATHENA Society

“Meg is smart, fearless and passionate about moving our community forward.”

Meg Zaletel, executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness and a two-term Anchorage Assembly member, has been named to the Anchorage Chamber’s ATHENA Society. She joins 13 other Anchorage community and business leaders inducted into the 2025 class.

The ATHENA Society is a national program that promotes women in the business sector for their community contributions, professional achievements and commitment to helping women. Those nominating Meg describe her as a smart, creative, hard-working leader who cares for our most vulnerable neighbors.

“Meg’s career has been focused on helping others, whether as an attorney, the executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness or as a member of the Assembly,” Mayor Suzanne LaFrance — herself an ATHENA member —said in her nomination letter. “Meg is smart, fearless and passionate about moving our community forward.”

Meg addresses guests at a December 2024 celebration of partners and donors who supported a campaign to buy winter gear for those who are unsheltered.

Most ATHENA members have strengths in two lanes: professional excellence and giving back. “For Meg, though, they are one and same,” said Michele Brown, the former longtime CEO of the United Way of Anchorage and a former Rasmuson Foundation senior fellow on homelessness.

Meg became executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness in 2021. The nonprofit works directly with people experiencing homelessness and is the lead agency supporting the Anchorage Continuum of Care, a network of services. Brown, also an ATHENA member, worked side-by-side with her to develop housing for those with very low incomes and was so impressed, she joined the ACEH board.

Meg hammers in a sign along the Coastal Trail.

Under Meg’s leadership at ACEH, the organization partnered to catalyze the creation of over 270 units of housing converted from hotels, Alaska’s first complex care shelter for medically fragile people experiencing homelessness, and the Third Avenue Navigation & Resource Center.  The public-philanthropic partnership received national recognition. Meg led Anchorage’s Next Step rapid rehousing project that helped 177 people in 2024 go from shelters and encampments to a home. She pushed for expanded street outreach to ensure connections to and supports for those living outdoors. When her team ventured out in the dark cold morning for the annual Point-in-Time Count of those experiencing homelessness, she was there, too. And she helped to craft Anchored Home, a five-year, data-driven strategic plan to address homelessness.

During her nearly six years on the Anchorage Assembly, one of Meg’s most important pieces of legislation led to creation of Anchorage’s Mobile Crisis Team, which sends trained crisis intervention specialists instead of police officers to situations of emotional crisis, according to the mayor and other supporters. She co-sponsored an ordinance that makes parental leave available to all Municipal employees. She co-chaired the Assembly Budget & Finance Committee, learning the nuances of municipal finance.

She works behind the scenes to research and draft legislation and build the alliances needed for success, Barbara Jones, an ATHENA member, former Municipal clerk and now deputy chief of staff, said in her nomination. She does her homework and is thoughtful and considerate to staff. Jones added: “Meg stepped up and did it all.”

Meg’s second Assembly term will end this year. Before she joined the Assembly, she worked as a disability rights lawyer. She started and operated Anchorage Community House from 2015-2020 to provide a grassroots space for people to gather, learn and grow. She volunteers for community causes such as the Alaska Bar Association’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

Meg is the 11th Anchorage Assembly woman to become an ATHENA member.

Meg Zaletel and Mac Lyons (at left) talk with individuals who had been sleeping outdoors during the 2024 Point-in-Time Count.