Dee Incoronato of Bigfork recently was involved in a conversation with friends in which the talk turned to the things people collect.

“‘Dee, you collect people,’” Incoronato said they told her. “They were right. I’m energized by being with people, I love helping raise funds. I love introducing people to an opportunity to help.”

Raised in Helena by parents who placed a high value on education, and a mother who especially emphasized philanthropy, Incoronato has taken her parents’ priorities to heart. Throughout her adult life, she has served in the educational and nonprofit spheres in ways that have benefited youth not just locally, but around the globe.

One of Incoronato’s biggest passions has been in her work with Intermountain Children’s Home. She has served on the board for 10 years, including a few years as president, traveling regularly to headquarters in Helena to work on behalf of children dealing with emotional distress.

“I fell in love with the organization,” Incoronato said of her first introduction to Intermountain after a friend asked her to join the board. “I knew that it was my niche.”

The organization has grown dramatically since Incoronato joined in 2002, when it was serving 50 children a day in three programs. Today Intermountain serves 700 children in 10 different programs throughout the state. The Kalispell Child and Family Therapy Clinic is a branch of Intermountain.

“We have a lot of needs in Montana,” Incoronato said. “There’s a lot of poverty in our state, and a lot of suffering children.”

Intermountain offers residential treatment, therapeutic services, adoption and foster-care programs, a clinic and youth homes. The new program Childwise advocates for the rights of children.

To increase her ability to help, Incoronato has been working on her doctorate in organizational development from the California School of Professional Psychologists in Fresno. The program is not online; Incoronato flies into Fresno once a month for an intensive weekend of instruction. She is two-thirds of the way through the two and a half years it takes to get the degree.

Her interest is in nonprofit capacity building.

“It’s all about information that will be helpful for nonprofits,” she said. “Everything that goes into making them sustainable, transformative and impactful.”

Incoronato, 58, started pursuing higher education as a young mother. After marrying Ron Incoronato and starting a family, she decided to attend Carroll College while they were living in Helena. She devised a plan that would allow her to accomplish two goals — keep track of her kids in a secure environment and graduate debt-free.

“I opened a daycare in my home,” she said. “I brought in two teachers; then I knew my kids were cared for and I could easily go back and forth to school.”

She finished her bachelor’s degree in psychology in three and a half years. After that, she and Ron wanted to travel, so they took their boys, Isaac and Jared, and traveled to Southeast Asia for six months when the boys were ages 5 and 3.

Driven by a desire to spend more time overseas, Incoronato earned her master’s degree in education with an emphasis on international programs from United States International University while the family was living in California. While she was a student, she was asked if she would be interested in working as an academic director at a branch campus of the college in Japan.

“My husband said we could go to Japan for one year, and he could be a house husband and I would home-school the boys,” she said.

They ended up loving Japan, so stayed longer than the planned year. Her two boys attended Japanese public school for two years, and Ron worked for the Hyogo Prefecture and the state of Washington, building a Western-style subdivision in Hyogo.

Dee then received a job offer for a similar position in Taiwan, and her family stayed there for three and a half years, with Ron working for the school in sales and marketing.

During this time, the Incoronatos would head back to Montana in the summers, and in 1992 purchased a home on Flathead Lake. Three years later, the family decided it was time to settle down.

“My boys said they wanted to stay here,” she said. “We wanted to figure out what life would be like in the Flathead.”

They made the Flathead Valley their home for the long haul, with Ron starting a construction business and the boys eventually graduating from Bigfork High School.

She kept up a traveling lifestyle as she became an associate professor at Carroll College. The long commute began to take its toll, though.

“After two and a half years of being there all week and being here on the weekend, I ended up missing out on some of my kids’ lives,” she said.

About the time she gave up her Carroll position, she was asked to serve on the Bigfork school board, and was on the board for three years in the late 1990s.

“It was a time of real growth and demographic issues,” she said.

In 2000 to 2006, she taught humanities at Flathead Valley Community College in an adjunct faculty position. Her motivation to help youth continually was fueled by the situations she encountered in the lives of many students there.

“It was a whole different student population than Carroll or the international students,” she said. “They were all relatively comfortable. The FVCC students are motivated, but they had a lot of difficulties. Sometimes they didn’t have money for groceries or power.”

Incoronato was impressed that FVCC had a fund to help out those students with material needs; she would like to see all institutions take the needs of youth so seriously.

Seven years ago Incoronato attended a conference with a national expert on children’s issues, Dr. Bruce Perry. He said that, at that time, one in 10 children at was living under emotional distress.

“He said it would soon be one in four, and this would morally and economically bankrupt the country,” she said. “That was such a powerful statement.

“We can do something about it, through laws and money to support and raise healthy children and families. That message needs to get out.”

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.