Anova is a Baltimore-based social impact initiative focused on restoring dignity, stability, and long-term opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and housing instability. We are not simply building another program or shelter. We are designing a coordinated ecosystem where individuals can stabilize, rebuild their lives, and reconnect with community.
Our work centers on three commitments:
Dignity-first care
Trauma-informed practice
Personalized pathways toward stability and independence
Rather than adding another layer to an already fragmented system, Anova focuses on redesigning how support systems work around real human lives.
Why Anova Exists
Across the United States, homelessness systems are under significant strain. Shelters are often overcrowded, services are fragmented, and pathways to long-term stability can be difficult to navigate. In Baltimore, the challenge is particularly urgent. Recent point-in-time counts show more than two thousand individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night, with disproportionate impacts on Black residents and individuals facing serious mental health and substance use challenges.
Despite the dedication of many service providers, the current system often requires individuals to navigate complex networks of services while managing the trauma and instability of homelessness itself.
Anova exists to address this gap. Our approach focuses on building systems that center dignity, agency, and long-term stability rather than short-term interventions alone.
Before
Fragmented system
After
Anova Model
Employment
Shelter
Legal aid
Mental
health
Health
care
Employment
Shelter
Legal aid
Mental
health
Health
care
Transforming
Our philosophy
Anova is guided by a set of core principles that shape both our design decisions and our operational approach.
Agency over charity
We open pathways-people walk them on their own terms
System, not band-aids
We fix root causes, not symptoms
Calm & Competence
Trust is built through steady, skilled presence
Dignity First
Every person deserves to be treated with respect before anything else is offered
Trauma-informed
We understand that past harm shapes present behaviour, and we respond with care
The Anova Model
MONTH 0
Entry
MONTH 0
Safe Placement
Immediate stable housing secured
Need Assessment
Holistic intake & personal care plan
Safety Plan
Immediate wellbeing & safeguarding
MONTH 1 - 6
Foundation & Healing
MONTH 1 - 6
Mental health
Counselling & Trauma therapy
Wellness
Physical health & daily routines
Identity Rebuilding
Community, culture & self-worth
MONTH 6 - 12
Skills & Independence
MONTH 6 - 12
Trade Training
Certified vocational skills program
Financial Literacy
Budgeting, banking & credit
Workforce Placement
Employer matching & mentorship
OUTCOME
Stable Independence
OUTCOME
Stable Housing
Sustained Employment
Connected Community
What We Are Doing Now
LISTENING
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
COMMUNITY VOICES
now
Learning & listening
Next
Rhythmic Initiatives
Winter
Planning & reflection
Spring
Launch & new cohorts
Summer
Deep delivery
Fall
Holistic intake & personal care plan
Meet the Founder
Love Iris Chery
Founder and Visionary Systems Architect
Love Iris Chery is a Haitian-American systems designer, strategist, and social impact architect based in Baltimore.
She holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Pomona College (2020), where she was a Posse Scholar and Senior Class President, and is completing dual graduate degrees: an MBA from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and an MA in Design Leadership from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2026). Her professional path has moved across several worlds including pharmaceutical research and development, patient care management, STEM education, corporate strategy at Edward Jones, and pro bono consulting for Baltimore-area nonprofits. These experiences share a common thread: learning how complex systems work, and how they can be redesigned to serve people more thoughtfully.
Love founded The Anova Project after years of applying systems thinking and human-centered design to real-world organizational challenges, working with nonprofits, community organizations, and businesses to reimagine how complex problems can be approached in Baltimore. Rather than treating homelessness solely as a service gap, she began to see it as a systems design challenge: a web of policies, institutions, environments, and lived experiences that rarely align around the human being at the center.
Her work brings together an eclectic combination of perspectives: the rigor of a scientist, the canonical methods of a Design Leader, and the diligence of a strategy consultant eager not to answer every question, but to ask the right questions, every time. She is fluent in Haitian Creole and French and deeply shaped by the belief that care, done well in listening before building, is itself a form of architecture.
The Anova Project is the expression of that conviction.
Not a charity, but a deliberately-designed institution.
Not a temporary fix, but dignified and sustainable solutions.
Love’s work asks a quiet question that sits beneath many social challenges:
what happens when systems are designed by asking the very people inside them what they actually need to live, or even thrive?.
THE ANOVA PROJECTS
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