The daughter of a librarian and an Episcopal priest, Meta Hogan spent her childhood in Seattle, Atlanta, and Ellensburg.

After graduating high school, Meta attended Macalester College in St. Paul before transferring to The Evergreen State College, where she earned her B.A.  Meta has strong experience in journalism, newspaper editing, and print design.  She has a great fondness for good literature, and is known to occasionally burst out with lines from Yeats.

Meta loves an adventure, and has traveled to Mexico, England, and Scotland.  She has been to Ireland twice, including a month-long backpacking tour in 2005.

Meta Hogan became a live-in volunteer in August of 2003 and founded the Voice of Olympia street newspaper (the paper edified our community for close to three years before going out of print). She served as Bread & Roses’ Advocacy Program Coordinator in 2004 and went on to coordinate the Women’s Guesthouse Shelter for two years before leaving Bread & Roses in 2007.

During her two year sabbatical from Bread & Roses, Meta made an bid for mayor in Olympia (she garnered about one third of the vote), took a job with a local mental health services agency, and learned to speak Russian.

Meta is currently employed part-time at Behavioral Health Resources.

Phil Owen grew up in the woods outside of Yelm, WA.  His mother is a retired pediatrician and his father is a retired septic-designer.  Phil attended four years at Charles Wright Academy before dropping out of high school in the eleventh grade.

Phil’s employment and volunteer history includes three years of paid manual labor (mostly chainsaw work), two years as a professional Emergency Medical Technician, three years as a volunteer firefighter, and eight years (both volunteer and paid) in homeless services.

Phil first began volunteering at the old Bread & Roses soup kitchen in July of 2001. He served on the board of directors for a year before becoming a live-in volunteer in June of 2003. Phil co-founded the Bread & Roses Advocacy Center in 2003 and served as the first coordinator for the program.  He currently is employed full-time as the Homeless Outreach Coordinator for the Family Support Center.

Phil and Meta left Bread & Roses in April of 2007 and spent two years away before returning on August 1st, 2009.

The couple began dating at Bread & Roses and were married in December of 2005.