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Volunteer Spotlight: Andy Lee


Andy Lee’s genuine care and appreciation for other people is evident not only by his chosen profession—psychiatric medicine—but also by his dedication to volunteering and giving back to his community. A volunteer with a myriad of different organizations over the years, Andy has been with Habitat since 2010, even leading a crew during a Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project that same year. He enjoys working alongside other people and feels a special satisfaction in accomplishing something as a group that couldn’t be completed alone. As a volunteer that comes out weekly, Andy says “I have known a lot of Habitat regulars over the years and one distinct commonality among them is their unpretentious dedication to service that has made it a real privilege to work alongside them.”
Volunteering is often the key that turns Habitat’s mission statement from words on a page into life changing experiences.

“I still think back often to a time I met a little boy whose mother had brought him to see their future house. He literally bounced up and down in excitement. The house was one I had worked on from the beginning and as this was the family’s first, it dawned on me that I had helped build the walls of the first bedroom he could really call his own.”


A Portland native, Andy moved east for college. After completing his undergraduate and Master’s degrees at John Hopkins University, he graduated from the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in 2016 and is currently applying to residency programs in psychiatry. In his spare time, he enjoys the “typical things most 30-something Portlanders like: coffee, beer, hiking (in good weather), board games (in rainy weather), and interesting food (in all weather).” Not surprisingly, he also likes working with his hands and is currently refurbishing a coffee table out of an old trunk he purchased at the newly-opened ReStore in Gresham.
Andy grew up in a working-class household in Portland, but feels fortunate to have been afforded certain opportunities—none of which, he mentions, would have been possible without the stability of a safe and secure home. His dedication to volunteering and the hard work he puts into each task brings our partner families that much closer to buying their own home with an affordable mortgage. This is his way of helping provide others the same opportunities he was given—the chance to grow and flourish in their own stable, safe, and secure home. After years of homebuilding and watching communities come to life, Andy knows that “working with and supporting Habitat is an investment in your neighbors.”

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