Communication Profiles

Describe Your Service Experience:
For me, personal experiences working with those experiencing poverty inspired me to volunteer with several organizations during undergrad and then work at a homeless shelter. It was challenging to see multiple angles of a complex issue and try to think through how we can best help. I was interested in the Trinity Fellows Program because of its emphasis on hands-on experience while pursuing a graduate degree, especially with the focus on social justice and equity.

Describe Your Trinity Fellowship Experience:
I loved having a community to engage with during graduate school. My placement was a great way to grow in skills and make new connections in Milwaukee. I learned a lot about a different area of the nonprofit sector and a lot more about local government, which helped me be a much more engaged community member.

Plans After Graduation:
I hope to continue working in Marketing and Communications after graduation, with the goal to work at a communications consulting firm. I see the things I learned during Trinity as elements that can and should be applied in the for-profit world just as much as the non-profit world.

Describe Your Service Experience:

I wanted to devote a year to volunteer work after college, but I also wanted to explore my faith and live an intentional life alongside others, so I felt drawn to the Urban Servant Corps and its tenets of service, spirituality, simplicity, and intentional community. I grew immensely through my work at SAME Café, where I was a first point of contact for a highly diverse body of patrons and volunteers and even learned to manage a commercial kitchen. Outside the café, I had a transformative year with my house community as we shared meals, spent quality time together, deepened our spiritual lives, and committed to simple lifestyles. When I learned about Trinity from a flyer at our weekly meeting, I immediately felt I couldn’t pass up such a compelling opportunity to gain education and work experience while continuing to journey alongside justice-minded peers.

Describe Your Trinity Fellowship Experience:

The combination of education, work experience, and community that the Trinity Fellowship provides is very difficult to find elsewhere. As a Trinity Fellow, I’ve learned to think more broadly and inquisitively about systems and the ways I am affected by them and can affect them in return. I’ve also grown more confident in the skills, attributes, and other assets that I bring to groups and organizations. In my work at Safe & Sound, for example, I supported and expanded the organization’s data and evaluation capacities, and I completed projects that helped the organization streamline and improve some of its programming and internal processes. I concluded my work feeling assured that I had made a significant and meaningful contribution to the organization and its future. I also felt fortunate to study and work in Milwaukee, a beautiful, hidden gem of a city with a rich history and culture, lots of places to explore, and lots of fascinating and good-hearted people to meet. I felt even more fortunate to have my cohort of Trinity Fellows as a dependable source of companionship and fun.

Plans After Graduation:

I am moving back to Denver to join my girlfriend, who was one of my housemates in the Urban Servant Corps and who has continued to live and work there. I look forward to launching a career in the nonprofit or public sector that involves internal organizational communication and/or research and evaluation. Whatever I do, I feel the Trinity Fellowship has given me a solid foundation of skills and knowledge that will serve me well and enrich my work to build a more just world.

Describe Your Service Experience:

Early in my undergraduate career, I felt incomplete and unenergized. With some reflection, I found that I felt most fulfilled when I was doing service and advocacy work. I began to make more time for those things in my life, and as I neared graduation, post-grad volunteering seemed like the obvious next step. I chose Magis because I’m passionate about education, wanted teaching experience, and an M. Ed. Degree was a cherry on top. I was placed at Notre Dame School of Milwaukee, where I taught 8th grade girls language arts. It was challenging and rewarding intellectually and emotionally.

During my time teaching, I became interested in digital communication, and especially how it can be leveraged to educate, bring communities together, and tell stories. This made me consider studying communication further and planted the seed for getting another master’s degree, especially one focused on nonprofits and community-oriented work. And, throughout two years in Milwaukee, I slowly warmed up to the city and began to appreciate its complexity and communities. I appreciated that Trinity was so intentionally Milwaukee-based.

Describe Your Trinity Fellowship Experience: 

My experience working for a nonprofit almost became secondary to my experience simply living in Milwaukee. The Trinity classes, network, and reflections helped me to live in Milwaukee with intention and purpose, engaging with the community and contributing to it actively.

I love Milwaukee. It’s big in some ways, but very accessible and affordable. The “smallwaukee” joke rings to some extent; when I meet someone new, it’s likely that we already have some connections in common. It’s a city with a lot of energy and tons of ways to get involved and take action.

Personally, one of my favorite Trinity memories was camping and hiking with some other fellows in the summer. Professionally, my work with Bridge the City was really empowering, and building my Professional Project around their needs was very exciting.

My Trinity community helped me to discern my goals and plans with fruitful, honest conversations. And, the Trinity community is so action-oriented and willing to share their network, so I’ve discovered so many ways to get involved. By helping me access those opportunities, I think being in this community has helped me feel greater agency in my neighborhood and city.

Plans After Graduation:

Going into the program, I saw myself working for a local nonprofit or in higher education after graduation. But two years and one pandemic later, things change! During my job search, I focused on finding a position that valued by background in education and communication and that prioritizes ongoing learning. For now, that position is at Epic Systems in Madison. I’m excited to apply my experience in the healthcare industry.

I’ll definitely apply the knowledge I gained for my MA in Communication, but I think I’ll also be applying what I’ve learned about living with intention and being involved. Leaving Milwaukee (for now!) will be difficult, but I’m excited to explore Madison and find ways to be civically engaged and active there.

Full-time Service Experience, Years Served, Location:
I spent just over a year at Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing in downtown Chicago, first as an AmeriCorps VISTA and then as a full time employee in the development department. Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH) provides free, comprehensive legal representation so that renters have a trusted advocate in court. While there, I spent my time planning fundraising events such as the annual Hearts for Housing card tournament, coordinating newsletters and other outreach materials, and working closely with the executive director to ensure smooth office operations.

Trinity Fellowship Experience:
I had a great Trinity Fellowship experience. While I was pursuing a degree in Communications and a certificate in Digital Storytelling, I was able to directly apply what I was learning in my communications classes to the work I was doing with my placement. My role as communications coordinator put me in a position to experiment with new technologies and find new ways to engage with the public. My supervisors were open to my ideas and helped me implement them on a larger scale than I imagined possible.

My time spent with Menomonee Valley Partners was a time of growth and opportunity. Not only was I able to continue to exercise my skills in event planning and community outreach, but was able to challenge myself to tackle larger projects such as a city-wide engagement campaign to gather public opinion on the future of the Menomonee Valley. Working at MVP was an exciting way for me to discern best practices in the nonprofit workplace. In addition to working closely with my own executive director, I was able to interact daily with leaders in the Milwaukee community who are already making a difference. These interactions with leadership were helpful in my decisions to continue to work in the nonprofit field after graduation.

Plans after graduation:
After graduation, I will continue to help Menomonee Valley Partners gather public opinion for their planning process and expand my services to help the Friends of the Hank Aaron State Trail rehabilitate their web presence and online communications strategies. I hope to one day find a job in either Milwaukee or Chicago, Illinois.

Current Position:
Administrative Services Manager, SaintA

Full-time Service Experience, Years Served, Location:

During my experience as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Missoula, MT with the University of Montana (UM) Farm to College Program, I was responsible for coordinating the local and sustainable food purchases for the University Dining Services. As one of five FoodCorps volunteers around the state of Montana, we worked individually to procure locally produced food at our respective schools and universities while engaging each other’s support to build a community-based food system statewide. As the UM Farm to College Coordinator, my work involved building relationships with local farmers, developing educational materials on the benefits of a local food system for staff and students, planning events and cooking classes, and developing a sustainable food-purchasing guide.

Trinity Fellowship Experience:

Because of the way the Trinity Fellows Program holds social and economic justice at its core, I was keenly interested in how the program most directly supports and nurtures the work of future urban, non-profit leaders.

The Trinity Fellows Program was the ideal forum and springboard to continue my passion for sustainable food systems and environmental issues while simultaneously being able to pursue a graduate degree in Communications, specializing in communication in health, environment, science and sustainability (CHESS). Through both my organizational placement and my academic program, I continued to explore the importance of effective communication for social change. The Trinity Fellows Program gave me the opportunity to bolster an academically rigorous graduate degree with elective credits about non-profit management, urban issues, social justice and social activism.

My placement at the Urban Ecology Center provided substantive work, incredible professional experience and a supportive community. I worked as the Development and Marketing Associate, focusing on marketing communications.

Plans after graduation:

I accepted a full-time position at the Urban Ecology Center where I am working as the Corporate Relations Manager and am thrilled to continue working at an organization that has provided me a wealth of knowledge, training, skills, and support. I am ever grateful to my mentors (academic, professional and personal) who have made my Trinity Fellows experience so valuable.

Current Position:

Executive Assistant, Dohmen Constellations

Service Experience:

As a Peace Corps volunteer I taught high-school English and coached baseball in Smolyan, a Bulgarian city located in the Rhodopi Mountains just north of Greece. I moved through these two years as more of a student than a teacher and remain grateful for the lessons. After my Peace Corps service I craved more of the international classroom I came to know in Smolyan and moved to Cairo, Egypt, to continue teaching and learning.

Trinity Fellowship Experience:

My work in Bulgaria and Cairo ignited my interest in non-profit organizing. I moved to Milwaukee in 2001, drawn mostly by the prospect of joining Marquette's Trinity Fellows Program. I spent two years working with the Milwaukee Boys & Girls Clubs to learn about the city and its non-profit sector, applying to and joining the Trinity Program in 2003.

The Trinity Fellows Program put my non-profit passion to work by connecting me to Meta House, a women's substance-use-disorder treatment agency. In my two years as Meta House's part-time manager of marketing and public relations I learned much about treating substance-use disorders. I also worked to surmount the challenges of sharing the agency's remarkable results with the Milwaukee community. My time at Meta House was complemented and informed by a strong academic program in organizational and inter cultural communication.

Together, these components of the Trinity Fellowship grew my understanding of social service as a vocation and added to my toolbox of professional and academic skills. The program helped me become a better non-profit advocate, spokesperson and media liaison. My studies intimately acquainted me the value of solid research and how to plan, carry out and use that research. These two years were by no means easy-but then again, anything worth having rarely is.

Plans After Graduation:

I look forward to integrating my passion of international development and gender issues with the experience I have gained as a Trinity Fellow. I plan to seek a staff position in a nongovernmental international development organization.

Current Position:

Marketing Operations Specialist, Presbyterian Healthcare Services

Service Experience:

Serving in the Peace Corps is adventurous because it's unpredictable. I joined right out of college, expecting to work in Latin America but ended up in the Caucasus Mountains instead. I worked in Gyumri, Armenia, a large, industrial city that was leveled by an earthquake in 1988. I taught English at a local college and worked with another school to repair its damaged auditorium. For me, the Peace Corps was a wonderful experience in a remote corner of the world. In addition to the Peace Corps, I volunteered with NISGUA as a human rights monitor in rural Guatemala.

Trinity Fellowship Experience:

I think the Trinity Fellowship captures the same sense of adventure as the Peace Corps. My Trinity placement was as Marketing Coordinator for St. Aemilian-Lakeside, a child welfare services agency. It was a new job. In an industry I knew nothing about. In a city I'd never been to. And I'd be starting graduate school at the same time. Trinity was a challenge and an adventure.

The great thing about Trinity is that so many parties are invested in your success. My supervisors, Marquette, and the Trinity Program all supported me as I grew into school and into my new position. At St. Aemilian-Lakeside, I completed marketing, web development, advocacy, and event planning projects with a new sense of confidence. Skills I developed in the classroom and on the job complemented each other in unexpected ways, particularly in the use of new technologies. And working in the nonprofit sector plugged me into the community in ways unknowable to students who never leave campus.

Current Position:

Marketing & Communications Program Director, Dohmen Company Foundation

Service Experience:

As a volunteer of the U.S. Peace Corps, I traveled to the beautiful mountains in Western Honduras, Central America--the land of the Lencas. The Lenca people are the living descendants of the southern border of the former Mayan civilization. In rural Honduras, I worked as a hillside agricultural extensionist, networking directly with local peasant farmers to develop and implement alternative, sustainable, small-scale farming practices, promoting soil conservation and agro forestry, and cultivating community leaders.

Trinity Fellowship Experience:

The best way I can find to describe the Trinity Fellows Program is as an immersion experience in integrated professional development. The design of the program is exceptional in that while pursuing an advanced degree, in my case, the study of rhetoric and policy/law/justice, a fellow will work in the community in a position or organization that hopefully ties into his or her career goals and academic work. Instead of working at the university as a graduate assistant, fellows are deployed in the Greater Milwaukee community, where they strive to address some unmet need.

My own experience in both my academic program and my agency work--developing a new leadership training program for the volunteer and paid staff of the American Red Cross--has been most challenging and rewarding. My academic work at Marquette is rigorous and my training program development and administration responsibilities with the Red Cross are undoubtedly instrumental in my professional development. The Red Cross has given me an innovative project, wherein my own leadership skills have been enhanced as a member of the United Way Speaker's Bureau, head of an in-house planning committee, champion of adult education, designer of workplace learning curriculum, and courses, and classroom facilitator.

Current Position:

Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Humboldt State University