Stories of Faith, Grit and Joy

Nursing major Elysia Gonzalez is able to give others a voice – because she found hers.

“I never thought I would be able to go to college, because I didn’t finish high school.”

Elysia Gonzalez dropped out of high school when she was 16. Yet 10 years later, she was a nursing student at George Fox University, looking into the dark eyes of hundreds of young girls listening intently as she taught in schools on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Kenya.

Education gives these girls the hope of changing their lives, of having a voice. Gonzalez, as she teaches and encourages them, is both the antithesis of this hope and the personification of it. She dropped out of school – but she keeps learning and she sees how hard things helped create who she is today.

Invisible

Gonzalez knows what it’s like to blend into the edges, hoping to be invisible. She knows what it’s like to be lonely.

A Latina in a majority-white school in Keizer, Oregon, she was hard-working but quiet at school, with a frizzy cloud of hair and not enough money for the Miss Me jeans with the rhinestone pockets.

“Teenagers get really caught up in who’s popular,” she says. “I felt like I had a lot of problems when I was in high school. Not that I would get into trouble, but I didn’t have a lot of friends. Emotionally it was hard. Kids are so mean in high school. So I decided that it would be best if I got my GED and started working.”

Her 27-year-old self would tell her 16-year-old self to stick it out. And that’s precisely what she said to every Kenyan girl in every school that she and a group of George Fox nursing students visited – with compassion, understanding how all-encompassing difficult situations are in the moment, but also with the conviction that comes with hindsight. As a junior in high school, she could not imagine tolerating one more year. And so she quit.

“My mom was really disappointed,” she says. “My mom went only to sixth grade. She understood how hard it was for me, but she really values education, so it was the hardest on her.”

Despite dropping out of high school, Gonzalez was not idle. Her parents raised her to work hard and save money, so she got her GED and began as a cashier at JCPenney. As soon as she turned 18, she took a job at Salem Health, handling patient registration. That’s when her own mom came in as a patient – in a lot of pain, with unknown severity.

“I was so worried, and that was one of the most horrible feelings I’ve had, feeling like I didn’t understand what was going on, and feeling like I was helpless in the situation,” Gonzalez says. Her parents spoke English, but they didn’t know the medical world or health insurance. The family felt lost and scared.

“There was one day that I crawled into her hospital bed, and I was hugging her, and I told her, ‘Oh Mom, I don’t want you to die.’”

Tears start immediately as Gonzalez remembers that day, years later. But while the doctor seemed brusque, the nurse assigned to them took a personal interest.

“I felt like I could really trust her, leaving my mom there,” she says.

Gonzalez doesn’t even remember her name, but that nurse shaped her future. One year later, she entered Chemeketa Community College for her nursing prerequisites, and in 2022 transferred to George Fox as a sophomore nursing student.

“I really like to be there for people who feel like they need it,” she says. “That personal interest she showed in my family and me – even now, it has a really deep impact on us.”

Determined

Gonzalez remembers the frizzy hair, the loneliness, and the lost feeling as she teaches and plays with the Kenyan schoolgirls. “I’m grateful for going through that, because it made me a stronger person now,” she says. “It gave me some humility that I’m able to carry over now. I have an interest in people who are in the background. People like that go through a lot that they don’t voice, and you don’t know unless you get to know them. I would say the girls there are the strongest I’ve ever met, with some of the things they’ve had to deal with.”

Last year was not the first time George Fox nursing students visited Kenya, partnering with the Kenyan organization Marafiki, Swahili for “friends.” But it was the first time they focused on health education – menstrual cycles, hygiene, the right to say “no” – rather than treating patients, trying to reach beyond immediate needs and shape this generation. Gonzalez found she has a gift for addressing hard topics and saying things people don’t want to hear.

“I have an interest in people who are in the background. People like that go through a lot that they don’t voice, and you don’t know unless you get to know them.”

“Reflecting on things I was told when I was younger helps me to more carefully pick my words, especially where people may think they’re being personally attacked,” she says. “I think, especially in healthcare, you have to have difficult conversations. The initial emotions behind that are not always accepting; sometimes it comes off as angry or confrontational. So you just have to have a calm demeanor, to pick your words carefully, to try and touch that person’s heart and get the message across that you need to.”

Gonzalez likes who she’s become. She was the only first-year nursing student accepted on the Kenya trip. She’s working at both Salem Health and Providence Newberg Hospital as a certified nurse assistant while studying to be a registered nurse.

Tucked inside the clear cover of her phone, she has a note from one of the schoolgirls. Invited to write anonymous questions to be answered by the nursing students, one girl wrote, “I want to be you.”

“It’s sad to think about someone wanting to be you, but whenever I feel like, ‘Nursing school is so hard. How can I do this?’ I remember I’m in such a fortunate position.”

Gonzalez will return to Kenya this summer. Whether there, or translating for a Spanish-speaking family in the emergency room, or calming a nervous patient awaiting a blood draw, she is determined to show people they are not invisible. They matter in a culture that may want them to blend into the edges. They have a voice.

When the burden of life became too heavy, Andrew Quach discovered God would carry him.

“One day I was walking through campus. It was just another day of trying to figure out what to do.”

Life pressed heavy on Andrew Quach that year. “I confined myself to this little space,” he says. “I just went to school, went to practice, didn’t really let anyone in, locked myself in my room.”

Nearing the end of his sophomore year at George Fox, he had learned that his grandpa’s liver was functioning at less than 5%; he would have to go on dialysis. Quach grew up with his grandparents in his home. Caring for them was part of family life. This was a blow.

“We had other family members pass away because of kidney failure,” he says. “It was really heartbreaking for me to hear, especially because I wasn’t in California and I couldn’t be home to help take care of my grandparents and help my dad with the process.

“Along with that I was just in this head space of, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Like, what am I doing?’ I wasn’t doing well in academics, and I wasn’t performing as well as I wanted to in track. And it was like the world was just pushing me under the ground.”

What’s with All the Nice People?

College life didn’t start that way. Freshman year was a culture shock, but in a good way.

Originally from Los Angeles, Quach had planned to remain in California or head for the Boston area, hoping to be recruited for college basketball. Nothing had worked out yet by his junior year of high school, and his basketball coach mentioned a small Christian school in Oregon that might have a spot for him. But he knew nothing about George Fox – or Oregon, for that matter. He stalled.

The summer after he graduated from high school, Quach visited. “The campus was awesome,” he says, but there was more to the equation. He grew up minimally Buddhist. “I came in without a faith background, kind of oblivious to all that was going on. I had heard all the stereotypes of what a Christian is, so I was hesitant coming in.” But he came, and had to adjust to more than the rain.

Quach came to George Fox for basketball, but ended up finding a home – and success – with the track and field team, setting an indoor school record in the long jump, and earning Academic All-American and All-Northwest Conference honors in each of his final three seasons.

“Every time I was on campus I would always get so many different, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ from people I didn’t know,” he recalls. “And it was really staggering for me because I was like, ‘These people are so nice. They genuinely want to get to know you, and they care.’”

This was something new. “When you’re in LA, you keep your head down. You don’t really talk to anyone. You mind your own business. Coming to Fox was such a big change. It was so significant.”

His first big freshman event, the ’80s Dance, came pretty close to touching bliss. “My roommates and I dressed up in the worst ’80s outfits ever that we got from Goodwill. It was terrible; we spent $5 on it. EHS was packed to the brim with students I’ve never met before. I didn’t even know that many people came to Fox. We were lifting people up, people were crowd surfing, and I took a moment to just look at it. I was like, ‘This is awesome. This is amazing. I don’t think it could get any better than this.’”

As refreshing as this new community was, he didn’t know then how significant the care of strangers, and new friends, would be.

Not Alone Anymore

By his second year on campus, Quach had adjusted to the overt friendliness – but not to his own unmet expectations in athletics and academics. Then he got that call from home. He knew his grandpa’s time was limited.

“It was really heartbreaking for me, and I struggled through that time,” he says. He felt every mile separating him from those he loved and what he had always known.

One evening after work, Quach called his best friends and asked them to go for a drive. The car was his safe space, but that night he needed more than silence. He needed people to listen to the thoughts and emotions he’d refused to voice. “I told them everything and they sat there and just listened,” he recalls. “They prayed over me and helped me figure out the next steps I needed to do, and told me how they thought God could make a real difference in my life – that I could put some of the weight on his shoulders and not go through this pain alone.”

Several hours later, Quach was headed to bed and decided it couldn’t get any worse, so why not try praying? “Before bed I prayed, and I said, ‘Hey God, I’ve never tried this before. I don’t really know much about you, but I’d love to get to know you more and just want to take this first step.’

“The next day I was walking through campus and someone came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but I just feel like you are surrounded by the Holy Spirit and I just want to pray for you.’

“Throughout the week a couple more people came up as well and they were just like, ‘Hey, I feel like you’re struggling. I feel like God’s telling me you need help. Can we pray?’ That entire week felt amazing. The weight came off my shoulders and I just thought, ‘Wow, I’m not in this alone anymore.’”

That week, everything changed.

“I’ve been able to take that next step of having those genuine conversations that I’ve wanted so much, and to experience the world the way it’s meant to be experienced,” says Quach, who graduated this spring with a degree in graphic design. “I’ve learned that trusting in God in the hard times is not something you do after the fact. I didn’t have that relationship with God for the hardships I faced a while back. But now I feel so much more prepared.

“I’ve tried to strengthen my relationship with God in every single way possible. Just praying every night, reading through the Bible to strengthen my knowledge of Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us. I know now that I’m not alone, that he’s here with me.”

A long way from home, Jonah found a mentor and friend in his professor.

It was a long and winding path that brought Jonah Wafula to George Fox. He had to leave his family in Uganda in the hopes that he could one day provide them with a better life. Along that journey, Jonah met engineering professor Neal Ninteman.

“I became good friends with his son, I met his wife, it was like family,” Wafula says. “He was like a father figure for me – he understood me. He said, ‘Come to my office whenever you have a question or you’re struggling with anything. Just talk to me and I’ll help.’ I felt comfortable going to other professors too, but Neal was my go-to.”

It wasn’t easy, but thanks to the support of his professors and lots of hard work and studying, Wafula was able to navigate his way through the university’s rigorous engineering program for nearly two years, despite coming to the U.S. at 15 with the equivalent of just a fifth-grade education.

But even as he was on his way to a career as an engineer that could one day help support his family back home, something didn’t feel right. Engineering wasn’t for him, and it seemed like every project was a struggle. What he really loved was telling stories, and he loved movies. Near the end of his sophomore year, Wafula began looking at the university’s cinematic arts major. “What if I could support my family doing something I really enjoy?” he thought.

But he wondered if his engineering professor and mentor would be disappointed in him for changing majors. Just the opposite turned out to be true. “Neal was really happy that I got to find what I enjoy,” Wafula recalls. “He wasn’t disappointed at all.”

In May, Wafula graduated with a degree in cinematic arts. “It’s just wonderful,” he says. “I really enjoyed all my classes. It’s not easy, but it’s what I love.”

As for Ninteman, he’s just happy to see Wafula discover God’s plan for his life. “What I’m most excited about is George Fox being the vehicle for helping Jonah find what he’s made for, to help him find what God has for him to do,” he says. “He discovered his gifts here, and now he has the skills to follow that path.”

Jonah Wafula
2021 Graduate
Major: Cinematic Arts
Hometown: Mbale, Uganda

Karisa’s art amplifies the voices of local refugees.

Karisa Keasey’s (G13) artistic gifts were born of pain. Her childhood was sometimes chaotic, and art was an escape. Trauma not only sparked her lifelong love for art, it also gave her a heart for the broken. Years later, as an art student at George Fox, Keasey wrestled with how to reconcile her creative talent with her desire for social justice. She could paint beautifully, but what good did that do?

Not long after graduating, Keasey ran across an article about the Syrian Civil War. She read about the horrific violence levied against innocent civilians, the barrel bombs and gas attacks, the refugees fleeing the devastation by the millions, leaving their beloved homeland behind in search of a better life in Europe or America. It broke her heart.

She decided to contact World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization that helps resettle refugees across the United States. Visiting World Relief’s Seattle office, Keasey learned more about the global refugee crisis and the needs of those resettled in the U.S. There, she realized that her artistic gifts could be uniquely useful.

“Refugees are real people with real lives, not just statistics,” she says. “We needed a way of getting more of their stories to the public.”

Partnering with World Relief, Keasey met with refugee families in her community, visiting them in their homes to get to know them and hear their stories. Then, working from photos, she began to paint. The result was When You Can’t Go Home, a coffee table book that follows the lives of 10 refugees alongside 30 watercolor portraits.

The process took two years of coffees, teas, and countless conversations. She listened to tales of heartbreak and hope and spent endless hours capturing smiles and sorrow with paint and brush. There was the Rwandan who escaped genocide and made it to America, and the Eritrean man who crossed the Mediterranean with his wife, risking it all for the chance of a better life and nearly drowning along the way. When Keasey showed him the book, he teared up and thanked her: “Someday I will get to share this with my kids so that they know what we fought for.”

“I was very careful to portray them as people,” Keasey says. “A lot of times refugees are depicted in their worst moments. Those things happened, but we are all more than our worst moments. And so I tried to depict them not as victims but as victors – not shiny and perfect, but with both the highs and the lows of their journey.”

Keasey’s goal is to spread awareness and amplify the voices of refugees in the Pacific Northwest, but she also wanted a more tangible impact. For every book she sells, Keasey gives 50 percent of the profits to World Relief, helping them continue their work of aiding and empowering refugees across the globe.

“For a long time, I felt like art was a useless gift,” Keasey says. “But over the years God taught me that not only can each of our gifts be used to love others well, but they’re really central to his plan if we choose to say yes to him.”

Visit karisakeasey.com to learn more about Keasey’s book.

Annika Pears overcame serious health setbacks to complete her degree.

Take it from Annika Pears, a graduate of the George Fox Adult Degree Program. In 2015, she was hospitalized with a severe stroke that changed the course of her life.

Pears was 11 weeks pregnant with her second child and living in Kansas, where her husband was stationed in the military. They were just months away from a dream they’d invested hours of time and most of their savings in – opening a coffee shop together.

Then, in an instant, it was all wiped away.

“I remember looking at the MRI and the entire left side of my brain was just completely black,” Pears recalls. “It was just dead. I had to start from the very beginning. Our life literally took a 90 degree turn.”

It took weeks for her memory to start to come back. She had to relearn how to recall certain words, manage her emotions and navigate daily life. Eventually, stroke rehabilitation brought the Pears back to Oregon to be closer to family support. There were numerous appointments and therapies, not to mention a 3-year-old and a newborn to care for.

“The first time I said my ABCs, I was so slow. It was like pulling them from the very recesses of my brain,” Pears says. “My emotional center was wiped out, so I was basically a 2-year-old in terms of my emotions. Once you realize what you’ve lost, you can’t imagine that anything is going to get better. The stroke wiped the slate clean, but it also broke me down to this point where I had to build back up.”

An important step in her journey to healing came through helping others who had suffered a similar fate. When a friend’s mom had a stroke, Pears quickly offered to meet with her. Then, through another friend, she was connected with a pastor who had suffered two strokes and lost the ability to speak.

“There’s something about connecting with someone who’s on the other side of it,” she says. “I know what it’s like to be trapped in your mind and how frustrating it is to not be able to get words out.

“Through these two scenarios, I realized, ‘Wow, I have a story that can actually really help people. So why wouldn’t I?’”

As she began to come to terms with her stroke, Pears made an important promise to herself: to go back to school and get her bachelor’s degree.

“You realize that you don’t want anything to hold you back,” she says. “I could either let this stroke completely stop me, or I could become the best version of myself. I decided my two daughters, my husband – and really myself – deserve nothing less than who I knew I was supposed to be. I knew I was supposed to finish my degree. Nothing was going to stop me.”

As a teenager, Pears hadn’t considered herself qualified to pursue college.

“College was always something I really wanted to do, but like a lot of people I didn’t think I could do it,” she recalls. “I didn’t think I was smart enough. A lot of my friends were really smart, and I didn’t see myself that way. Now I know that’s a lie.

“It was a process to overcome these lies I’ve been telling myself for years. They were embedded and entrenched. I think the stroke helped, because I had to rewire my brain.”

Part of stroke recovery is helping the brain make new connections to circumvent pathways that were damaged – a process called neuroplasticity, or “rewiring the brain.” A close friend encouraged Pears to see rehabilitation as a way to “rewire her brain for God’s truth.”

“It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. You’ve got to do what God is asking you to do,” Pears says. “I don’t want my girls to think that anything can hold them back – that they’re not good enough or smart enough. I want them to know that they can do it.”

In 2020, Pears enrolled in the Adult Degree Program to pursue a bachelor’s degree in social and behavioral studies. Like many adults who return to school, it was a daunting experience – but for Pears, even more obstacles stood in her way.

“I had no idea everything that 2020 would hold,” she says. “Literally, I was diagnosed with cancer, we opened a new business, and there was a pandemic. I also had two kids at home, so I was trying to figure out Zoom and homeschooling, too.”

For the next 16 months, Pears persevered through surgery, brain fog from radiation, schedule changes due to the pandemic, and the demands of parenting two kids with schools shut down – all while completing presentations and assignments for her program.

“The Lord uses all of these things to continue to heal my mind – to push me, even when I don’t want to push myself,” she says. “Getting my degree showed me that I was always worth it. God used George Fox to instill that belief in me.”

In April of 2021, despite all the obstacles, Pears graduated with her bachelor’s degree.

“I want it to be a stake-in-the-ground moment for my girls,” she says, “so they can look back and think, ‘My mom finished her degree, and she did it when it was so hard. How can I let anything stop me?’”

Pears firmly believes that God guided her steps and brought her to this place for a reason. “I did this with the Lord. He led me, and I did it – with a stroke brain, in the middle of a pandemic, with wildfires and an ice storm, while homeschooling two kids and helping launch our new coffee business.

“I feel so much more capable now. Nothing can stop me from the places that I know the Lord wants to take me. It’s a belief that has taken root so deep inside – I know that I’m capable of whatever I want to do next.”

A health scare and a tragic death in the family forced Anthony Pasion to lean on God.

“Being on the football team has been the best time of my life,” he says. “Just being able to have guys that are brothers and going to be lifelong friends, that’s the biggest joy I’ve had since being at Fox.”

Then, in an instant, football was taken away.

“My vision started going blurry, and I wasn’t really sure why,” Pasion says. “I ended up going into OHSU and they found out I had this thing called optic neuritis, which is inflammation of my optic nerves.”

The cause: an anti-MOG disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy proteins in the eye. Pasion first felt the effects in his left eye at the end of his sophomore year, then as a junior in his right eye as well. More trips to see specialists and heavy doses of medication followed.

“I was scared,” he says. “I didn’t really know what to do, I didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t know if my sight was ever going to come back.”

Worse yet, in the winter of 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pasion’s family felt the full force of the deadly virus, as his father, mother and sister all tested positive.

“My mom was in the hospital for two weeks, and then my dad was in the hospital for a month,” he says, reliving the horrific experience.

On Christmas day, his father passed away.

“That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life,” he says. “I’m still trying to deal with that every day. I was like, ‘Why would God do this to me? Why would he take away my dad?’”

Even though he wasn’t playing, Pasion leaned on his teammates, coaches and George Fox family like never before.

Head coach Chris Casey checked in on him “all the time.” So did defensive coordinator John Bates. And every week, like clockwork, there was a phone call or coffee visit with campus pastor Jamie Johnson. Then there were his “brothers” on the football team, who rallied around him with friendship and support when he needed it most. During this time, Pasion also palpably felt the impact his father had on his life.

“Even though my dad wasn’t there in the present, I always felt him with me,” he says. “Everything he taught me, I tried to carry on.”

He thought about what would make his father proud: to be a good student, to graduate, to be a good man. And as he slowly began to heal, so too did his relationship with God.

“It was hard to keep my faith at first,” he says, thinking back to the darkest times. “But as the months went on, I felt my faith grow stronger.”

And after all that was taken away, something was returned: the ability to play football again. A new medication has subdued the optic neuritis, improving his vision and allowing Pasion to return to the field next semester for one last season before the fifth-year senior graduates in the winter of 2022.

“Sports is something that I’ve loved my entire life,” he says. “If I wasn’t able to play football again, I’d be pretty devastated. Thank the Lord that he gave me my sight back!”

A business management major who may someday pursue a career in coaching or athletics administration, Pasion now looks to the future with a renewed sense of hope and a trust in God that can only be gained through trial by fire.

“Each time I’ve gone through something hard, I’ve grown from it, I’ve became stronger because of it,” he says. “The main thing that stands out to me from this experience is God is always going to be there. You may not realize it in the moment, and it may not feel like he’s always there, but he’s always going to be with you.”

A life-threatening heart defect as a child fuels Emery Miller’s desire to help others.

A word of advice for those who happen to meet Emery Miller: Don’t tell him he can’t accomplish something. You’re only fueling his fire and setting yourself up to be proven wrong.

Miller should have died before the age of 1. Born with a hole in his heart and a failing aortic valve, he required four open-heart surgeries before the age of 7. As a child, the hospital became a second home – so much so that the facility offered his parents a reserved parking spot. He literally became the face of Phoenix Children’s Hospital, his smiling mug shot beaming on promotional posters encouraging people to support children like him.

All the while, Miller kept baffling his doctors. “Based on their tests, I should have been on the floor turning blue,” he says. “Instead, I was playing with toys. They said I was the happiest sick kid they’d ever seen.”

Doctors told him he would never play sports. He played T-ball. He was then told he would never play at the coach-pitch level. He did. Middle school ball? “Out of the question,” they said. He did that as well. Varsity baseball was the next test. Mission accomplished.

Today, Miller can’t help but chuckle when he ponders this reality: The kid who was told he would never be active – never live a “normal life” – is now playing collegiate baseball at George Fox University, overseeing a charity that’s operating in 13 states, and serving as a spokesperson for national organizations that include the American Heart Association and United Way.

“In my life I’ve been told a lot of things,” says Miller, a sophomore finance and management double major from Phoenix. “But anybody who knows me knows I have a ‘Whatever you tell me I’m going to prove you wrong’ attitude. In fact, I enjoy hearing people tell me I can’t do something. I would love some of my early-childhood doctors who doubted me to come watch me play ball. They wouldn’t recognize me.”

Miller’s defiance of the odds is fueled by a choice he made early on: Don’t let negative experiences define you. It’s a belief that so resonates with him that he chose those very words as the tagline for his charity, Team Emery. Rather than let misfortune take you down, use it as motivation to fight back and, in doing so, inspire others. It’s that resolve that led him to start Team Emery – a nonprofit launched by a simple idea he had as a fifth-grader.

“I had this thought that, if I could give a token of gratitude to help out another family, that would be sweet,” he says. “So I gave a teddy bear to another kid, and my mom posted something on Facebook. Within 20 minutes, we had 45 likes, 20 comments and five people saying they wanted to donate bears.”

George Fox basketball fans participated in a teddy bear toss during Bruin FanFest in January. A total of 371 bears were collected by Emery’s charity and delivered to Newberg police and fire stations, then distributed to children at local hospitals. Team Emery has donated more than 44,000 teddy bears to sick children over the course of eight years.

Miller didn’t know it at the time, but his gesture of kindness was about to catch fire. Teddy bear donations began trickling in, and as word spread, the bear parade intensified. In its first year, Team Emery donated 400 bears to Phoenix Children’s Hospital – one for each child who had been admitted. Another 1,200 were given out in the charity’s second year, 1,600 in its third, and 2,200 in its fourth. All told, Team Emery has donated more than 44,000 bears in eight years after raising a record annual total (9,000 bears) in 2018. Looking ahead, the charity plans to add a scholarship in 2019, named in memory of one of Miller’s childhood friends, Dustin Tack, who died five years ago.

“When you say, ‘You want to make a difference? Come, follow me,’ you’d be surprised how many people get in line behind you,” Miller says. “People want to help. They want to make a difference. They just need to be inspired on how to do so.”

Team Emery was officially established as a nonprofit in 2016, and ultimately Miller hopes to see the organization operate in all 50 states. It’s just one branch of his charitable endeavors. Through speaking engagements at high-profile events – including those where he’s spoken alongside former NFL and television celebrities – Miller has helped raise more than $300,000 for the American Heart Association. At one particular event where he was being honored for his community service, Miller had the opportunity to meet the event’s keynote speaker – 23-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Michael Phelps.

“Michael Phelps mentioned me in his speech. How cool is that?” Miller laughs. “Seriously, none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t been born with this heart issue. I never would have had the opportunity to meet Michael Phelps, or speak at an event in Washington, D.C., where President Obama’s top aides were in attendance. Nobody would have ever chosen the start I had in life, but I’m doing my best to make something good come of it.”

Wherever he goes – the classroom, the ballfield, the hospitals – Miller is compelled to seek those who are down and encourage them. It’s a desire born out of his experience and nurtured by the love, support and encouragement he’s received from his parents, teachers and coaches. “Medically speaking, I shouldn’t be here, so why am I here?” he asks, pausing to reflect on the philosophical nature of the question. “I don’t ask, ‘Why me?’ I ask, ‘Why was I given this opportunity?’”

Miller’s message of hope and encouragement serves him well on campus and on the field of play. George Fox head baseball coach Marty Hunter calls him the “ultimate team guy.” Fellow teammates admire his determination and good-natured attitude, and he considers the baseball team his “other family.” The guy who, as a freshman, was the out-of-stater who knew no one on campus has transformed into a mentor to younger players. To them all, his message is the same.

“Bad things are going to happen to you in life,” he says. “The storms are going to come, so get ready. The key is to not let them define you. Don’t let negative experiences ruin your life. It’s easy to do, and sometimes it is easier to lay down and say, ‘This stinks.’ But God never said life was going to be perfect. What he does say is, during those rough times, he’s going to be there with you.”

Miller is also a firm believer in the exponential power of generosity. “I don’t think people realize how much they can accomplish by doing the simple things,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be big. Just give $1 to the American Heart Association. Donate a bear. Play bingo with someone at Friendsview. Just get involved and change the life of one person. They, in turn, will hopefully do the same for someone else.

“I guess that’s what I think of when I hear ‘stand tall.’ When you stand tall it will inspire those around you to stand tall with you. When you have an entire community doing so, it turns into a state and, hopefully one day, a nation. When that happens, what’s going to stop us?”

After surviving the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Marchelle Carl found a career in counseling.

It was Oct. 1, 2017. Country star Jason Aldean had just started his hit song, “When She Says Baby,” on the final evening of the Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas. As the tightly packed audience danced, sang and cheered, Marchelle Carl and two of her friends stood right in front of the main stage – the same spot they’d taken for the past two nights.

But before the band could finish the first chorus, Carl heard a crack, crack! Something seemed wrong. Maybe a speaker blew out, or perhaps some prankster lit a few firecrackers. It was difficult to hear over the noise of the 22,000 people in attendance.

She looked around, but instead of worried audio technicians or overly rowdy fans, she saw chaos unfolding around her. People were screaming. Concertgoers began climbing over barricades. Carl suddenly realized it wasn’t a faulty speaker or firecrackers. It was gunfire.

Grabbing her cousin’s hand, she fled to the right-hand side of the stage, scampering to find cover behind a sunglasses vendor. Later, they’d learn that was the side closest to Mandalay Bay – the same side that the shooter was firing from.

A minute passed. After a few moments more, they caught their breath. Finally, there was a brief lull in the bullets, and people began to move.

But as Carl stood, she couldn’t see her cousin or her friends. Instead, she found herself surrounded by masses of panicked people running for their lives. It felt like a stampeding herd of elephants.

All around her, rumors flew. Some said there were snipers on the rooftops of multiple hotels in the area, while others claimed there was a bomb threat. There was no way to be certain what the truth was as she became swallowed up in the fleeing crowd.

As she ran, she called her mom, unsure if this would be her last chance to say goodbye.

‘It felt like the longest 10 minutes of my life’

After the crowd pushed Carl farther down the strip, she found herself in lockdown at a hotel, separated from her friends. She tried to keep in contact with them, but her phone was dying and she was struggling to find service. Nonetheless, she was safely out of range of the shooter, and so were they.

A tattoo reminds Marchelle Carl of the date and the first note in the song that was playing when she heard shots and started running.

The next morning, she decided to return home, foregoing the group’s ziplining trip they had planned. “I was never so happy to see that PDX airport carpet,” she recalls.

Other than a few cuts and bruises, Carl was unharmed physically, “but the mental injuries were a lot more impactful. I came home, and at first I thought, ‘I can just take a day or two off work, and I think I’ll be fine. I can resume life. I’m no longer in Las Vegas. I’m safe. I made it.’”

But that night, she couldn’t sleep.

“I could not get the sound of the gunshots out of my head. I could not get away from the panic as I ran to safety. And I just could not fathom getting in a car and driving and doing basic things,” she says. She needed groceries. She needed to walk her dog.

Taking it one step at a time, she decided to try circling the block with her dog.

They fell into their usual pattern of walking and then running alongside each other – but the running felt all too familiar, and Carl could feel the adrenaline building up far too quickly. “It reminded me of running for my life,” she says. “I really struggled.”

After realizing she needed more than just a day off from work, Carl decided to seek counseling.

This wouldn’t be the first time she had seen a counselor. In kindergarten, she was introduced to play therapy after her best friend passed away from leukemia. Then, in high school, she sought counseling when her brother and sister-in-law lost their baby. In 2016, she went into counseling again when a childhood friend took his life. But this time felt different from the past.

“This counselor really helped normalize anxiety for me,” she says. “I knew anxiety existed, I knew it was a thing that people have, and I’ve heard people talk about it, but I never knew what it felt like until I went through the anxiety of not being able to go to the grocery store, not being able to drive, not being able to sleep at night because I was so fearful of another nightmare or closing my eyes and hearing gunshots.”

Through trauma-informed counseling, Carl was equipped with intervention techniques that allowed her to calm down in those moments of fear. Many of these focused on using her senses, like touching her bedsheets, petting her dog or looking at the nightlight in her room.

When reflecting on her past, Carl saw a similar pattern: Every time she went to counseling, it helped her.

‘I have sat in a client chair before, and I know it works’

After researching what she would need to become a licensed professional counselor, Carl discovered George Fox. Following a lengthy interview process, she was accepted and enrolled in the two-year clinical mental health counseling program, adding a trauma-informed care certificate.

By specializing in trauma counseling, Carl could learn about the other side of counseling that she received as a child.

“I worked directly with Dr. Anna Berardi to set up what my trauma coursework would look like,” says Carl, who stayed with Berardi all the way through licensure.

“What I’ve learned from my education, from classwork, and from my own losses and tragedies is that part of creating hope is being able to have a community of support behind you.”

She also took a few courses from Berardi for her trauma-informed care certificate, and because those courses often encouraged students to share their personal stories throughout the curriculum, “they opened my eyes to redefining the definition of trauma while recognizing that no two people’s traumatic experiences are the same,” she says.

This created a sense of community for Carl. In every class, she grew close to her peers – an environment she strives to emulate in her counseling practice today.

“What I’ve learned from my education, from classwork, and from my own losses and tragedies is that part of creating hope is being able to have a community of support behind you,” she says. “Those are the people who also make you want to keep fighting, make you want to get better, and make you want to have a more fulfilled life. If you do not have a good supportive community, you’re really going to struggle.”

‘This struggle is not going to last forever’

After Carl graduated, Berardi approached her and offered her a position as an adjunct professor for a few of the entry-level counseling courses at George Fox. “I ended up loving it,” she says. “Now I always ask if there are any classes for the next semester, and I teach one or two of them.” In the future, Carl wants to return to school for her PhD so she can continue to educate and mentor aspiring counselors.

But for now, she remains focused on instilling hope in her clients while working through their struggles, just as her counselors had helped her. She works part time at Kaiser Permanente and serves as a full-time counselor associate at the Northwest Catholic Counseling Center in Portland.

“I tell every client on our very first session together, ‘My No. 1 goal is that you won’t need me anymore. You will move on and move through whatever you came for,’” she says. “‘We will have worked it out together, and you’re going to stop counseling because you don’t need me.’ And that’s when I know that we did a good job.”

After four decades of waiting, it was Susan Marcu’s turn to walk across the stage.

“This has been a longing in my heart for my entire adult life,” says Susan Marcu (B22).

Marcu supported her husband through college in the ’80s and later her three children, including daughter Ashley, who graduated from George Fox in 2008.

Finally, 14 years later, it was her turn to walk across the stage. In December, Marcu earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and mental health studies from the university’s Adult Degree Program.

Traditionally, George Fox legacy students are those who had a parent or grandparent attend the university. In the Marcu family’s case, that legacy is reversed, with Susan continuing the George Fox tradition that her daughter started.

Marcu attended college briefly right out of high school but never finished. “I was not ready,” she says. “And it wasn't long after I forfeited that opportunity that I realized what I had forfeited.”

With three kids to raise, there was little time to fit in college classes. She pursued an entrepreneurial path instead as a seamstress and sewing instructor, later working full time at a CPA firm. Throughout her kids’ childhood, Marcu encouraged creativity and found ways to grow her own skills.

“My art has always had a practical element to it,” she says. “I taught sewing and art classes at my kids’ school. Our house was a constant buzz of arts and crafts.”

As a creative maker and craftsperson throughout her life, she knew she wanted to use those gifts to help others. She began investigating art therapy programs and mapping out her plan. Earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology was the first step.

“I really wanted to be at a Christian college, especially for psychology, which is primarily a secular area of study,” she says.

Marcu began taking courses in 2019, and because the university’s Adult Degree Program is all online, she was able to continue right through the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was doing this at a time when the world was upside down and all of our perceptions were on the line. Being in the coursework during the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to engage with my cohort and wrestle with the pressing issues we all faced,” she says.

In the end, all the hard work – and the long wait – “was 100% worth it.”

Since graduating, Marcu has been accepted into a master’s program for art therapy. Her heart is to work with kids who have experienced trauma, she says, but she is open to wherever the journey takes her. As someone who is “always in her element when doing art,” she wants to use her passion to help others – and now she’s equipped to do just that.

“I have grown exponentially through this program,” she says. “It’s broadened my point of view on so many things. I have been privileged to hear other perspectives and also get to know the people behind them. It has deepened my faith.”

Connecting over a shared language created a special bond between Estefan and his professor.

Estefan Cervantes Rivera is a civil engineering major at George Fox, and he’s loving every minute of it: his friends, his professors, the community – not to mention seeing his future plans to become a structural engineer start to become a reality. Just one thing was missing: None of his engineering professors spoke fluent Spanish.

“At my high school I was so used to talking with my teachers in Spanish,” recalls Rivera, who was raised in Woodburn, Oregon, where more than 50 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic. “It’s just a different way of communicating about your experiences, and it was pretty tough coming here and not having that outlet.”

Then, one day, he took his first class with professor Jeff Walters. It was Mechanics of Materials, and in the midst of talking about the complexities of the subject, Jeff told a story where he made a reference in Spanish. “I remember thinking, ‘I have to go talk to him,’” Rivera says.

He doesn’t recall what that first conversation was about. Instead, he remembers a feeling: “Just a sense of relief, you know? Like, finally!” That first conversation would be one of many more to come, with topics ranging from a date that didn’t go well, to Rivera’s desire to give back to his community, to his faith journey and so much more.

“I would stay back and talk with him after class, just goofing off,” he says. “It was just nice because it felt more like a friendship than a professor. It felt really good to truly be understood.”

The feeling is mutual. “Getting to know and work with Estefan has been a complete joy,” Walters says. “Students like him are the reason why I get excited about this job. He inspires me forward as a teacher.”

And recently, Walters was able to inspire Rivera to pursue his dream of giving back to his high school in Woodburn by showing students that they could go to college and become an engineer, too. Rivera began to work on a presentation, but doubt crept in. “Who am I to do this?” he thought. For the longest time he didn’t share his presentation with anyone, then finally he showed Walters.

“He gave me words of affirmation and words of encouragement,” Rivera recalls. “It just made me smile and gave me confidence that if someone I respect so much thinks that, I know I can do it. He’s had such a great impact on me.”

Estefan Cervantes Rivera
Major: Civil Engineering
Year: Senior
Hometown: Woodburn, Oregon

The support of others during devastating events inspired Shaun Davis’ counseling career.

For as long as she can remember, Shaun Davis has been there for people.

She was the little girl who served as the mediator when her friends weren’t getting along. The high schooler people naturally gravitated toward when they needed a listening ear and a word of encouragement. The empathetic adult with a heart for the hurting and marginalized.

“You are invited into people’s lives. You are given this immense privilege of walking in those hard times into some of the scariest, darkest, saddest moments of people’s lives. And you get to be there with them. I don’t have to do something magical; I just get to show up with people.”

Those who know her weren’t surprised, then, when she decided to go back to school as an adult to pursue a career in psychology. Now a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Newberg, Davis is doing the very work she has longed to do since childhood: help restore lives.

In a cruel twist of irony, she would need to rely on the support of others to get there.

The Fire

It was during her final months as a social and behavioral studies student in George Fox’s Adult Degree Program that Davis’ home burned to the ground. Everything was destroyed, but thankfully, no lives were lost. It took 18 months to rebuild the house, leaving her family – including husband, Arlin, and one of her daughters – displaced and having to start anew.

With no home computer, she managed to complete assignments on an iPhone until her laptop could be replaced by insurance, while her church and ADP peers and professors “pulled together mountains of clothes, food, supplies and everything” to see her family through.

She also found solace from a psychologist she connected with through George Fox. “She, in so many ways, changed my life through her support,” says Davis, a 2017 alumna of George Fox’s Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) program and a 2011 graduate of the university’s Adult Degree Program. “She taught me what it was all about, how to sit in grief and not be swallowed up, to not be afraid of being sad. And she just metaphorically held me in that really difficult time when some days I didn’t know what we would do.”

As time went by, the family rebuilt their lives. Life returned to normal. Inspired by the incident and the counsel she received, Davis was ready to tackle a new challenge and pursue a doctorate in psychology, with the goal of coming alongside others just as others had done for her.

Then tragedy struck again.

The Accident

It was during her third year in the PsyD program when, driving home from class one day, Davis was involved in a car accident that resulted in a severe concussion and left her bedridden for three months.

Once again, her community came to her aid. Classmates visited to review the things she was missing, and a clinical supervisor stepped in to help manage her caseload. “The PsyD community made it very plain that my health was most important,” she says. “They really taught me a lot about how we can respond when life happens in the middle of this really important work that we’re doing. I literally was dependent on others to be sure I didn’t fall behind or fall out of the trajectory I was on.”

The camaraderie with her peers and the personal touch of her professors caught Davis off guard. “I had really not expected to form the kinds of relationships that I did when I came into the program,” she says. “I was a middle-aged woman. I had a family. I felt like I was just going to go to school, do my homework and graduate. But the cohort model really fosters you stepping into a group of people and becoming family. It was something so surprising to me, and I don’t know that I could have done the program without it.”

Career Confirmation

The traumatic experiences – and the care she received in their aftermath – confirmed Davis’ long-held belief that she was put on this planet to be a source of encouragement, hope and inspiration to others. They also reinforced her resolve to be a more nonjudgmental, validating and positive person.

“You go into this field thinking, ‘I’m going to help others,’” she says of psychology. “But what you really find is that you are invited into people’s lives. You are given this immense privilege of walking in those hard times into some of the scariest, darkest, saddest moments of people’s lives. And you get to be there with them. I don’t have to do something magical; I just get to show up with people. It is something more than I ever imagined it would be.”

She has also discovered that helping others goes beyond being a shoulder to cry on. “You can actually help people in a journey of healing. I felt a very spiritual connection to that. And to me, that’s the calling that I think God has put on my life – to combine the natural inclinations with the education and really impact people’s lives.”

Giving Back

Davis’ gratitude for the training and support she received at George Fox is reflected in her desire to meet with PsyD students on a regular basis. She supervises many of them in her own clinic, giving them valuable clinical practice experience while providing the community with a low-cost therapy option, and she teaches a family systems class. “That was one of the most formative classes I took when I was a first-year student,” she says, “so it feels like a nice way to give back to the program.”

Her encouragement to students: Don’t just “do the homework.” Be present.

“Like I did, many students come into psychology thinking there’s a handbook that will tell them, ‘Do this certain thing and people’s lives will magically be changed.’ That’s not how it works. What I’ve learned is that this process of providing unconditional acceptance, safety and relationship enables people to navigate those really hard and scary places.

“The greatest part of my job is that I have seen that being there in that way – nonjudgmental, accepting, validating, unconditional, positive – changes people’s lives. Because as they experience that, they begin to have hope that other parts of their life can be different as well.”

Her encouragement to others: “The more we understand ourselves, the more compassionate we can be toward ourselves, and therefore, the more compassionate we can be with the people around us.”

At George Fox, Dayana Caamal Perez discovered how God truly saw her.

A first-generation college student with a heart for others, Perez felt that she had been called to George Fox for a purpose. But when she arrived on campus, self-doubt set in.

“My freshman year, it was very hard to see anything positive,” she says. “There were a lot of changes, and also I didn’t really know who I was in this new space. I knew that God had called me here, but I didn’t really know what that would look like.”

Struggling with low self-esteem, Perez felt that she would never be good enough to pursue God’s purpose for her life.

“I always saw God through a conditional lens,” she says. “I thought you had to do certain things before you could meet with God or before you could be good enough for him to use you. I honestly didn’t think that God could have used me in any way. I didn’t think there was anything to me.”

It wasn’t until she applied for an internship with the university’s spiritual life office her sophomore year that Perez began to understand what she was capable of.

“I was scared to go into the spiritual life office, but I knew I had to get work experience somehow,” she says. “They poured into me in various ways, unpacking some of the beliefs that I had about God that were untrue.”

And as Perez began to grow in her relationship with God, she also gained confidence in her abilities and learned to face her fears head-on. A self-described servant leader who would rather be in the background, Perez got her first opportunity to preach in chapel her senior year.

“It was very scary, but it was also very life-giving because I was able to see that I could use my strengths and deliver the message God wants me to say in that moment,” she says. “I’ve been able to see myself in a different light, with confidence, because I understand who I am.”

And even more important, she’s understands how God sees her.

“I now genuinely believe that God sees me with compassion and grace, but also capable of a lot more than I imagined,” she says.

As Perez enters this next chapter of her life as a new college graduate, the path ahead is once again uncertain. She may pursue grad school and a career in counseling – “In the church, we need more people who can help with mental health,” she says – or she may put her marketing degree to work in the business world.

“I do know that helping people is going to be the primary focus of whatever I do,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much I loved others until I got to Fox. I’ve discovered it’s an actual gift that I have – to be able to listen to others, to understand where they’re coming from. It’s one of the skills that I’ve definitely grown into.”

Whatever the future may hold, Perez now looks to the unknown with hope and excitement.

“It’s going to be scary, but I’m excited for the growth and to see where I end up going,” she says. “God’s taken me this far. I believe he’s going to take me farther.”

A group of new friends made Faith feel right at home her first day on campus.

When I first arrived at George Fox, I had little to no idea what I was doing. It was the first time I had ever stepped foot in Oregon. I remember feeling excited and confused when the taxi dropped me off outside of Edwards Hall. I stood in the parking lot with my suitcases watching parents, football players, PAs and RAs run back and forth from the dorms to the cars helping students move in.

Fun Fact about Faith
I’m one of eight children, with three brothers and four sisters! All five of us girls were adopted from different areas of China. Two of my sisters attend George Fox: Joy, a marketing major who just graduated, and Grace, a sophomore psychology major.

My parents were 2,000 miles away from me. Because flights were so expensive, both of them remained back home on Kauai. I remember having no idea where Hobson Hall was located and felt unsure how to ask for help. Thankfully, a group of student leaders saw my distress and came to my assistance. They not only directed me where to go, but actually ended up taking my suitcases and rolling them all the way to Hobson. When they did this, I suddenly felt less alone because these people who didn’t even know me went out of their way to help me.

I highly doubt they knew their kind act would be one that would stick with me throughout my college experience. It was the kindness shown to me that day that motivated me to want to become a student leader myself. I spent my last three years on campus in residence life, and I have loved being able to encourage and walk alongside fellow students on their college journeys.

Faith Burns
2021 Graduate
Major: Biology
Hometown: Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii

After a tragic fire, Sierra was surrounded with love and encouragement.

Last summer my family was impacted by the LNU Lightning Complex fires in California. We lost the only home I have ever known two days before I had to drive up to Fox to start the fall semester. It was incredibly challenging for me to leave my family so soon after this terrible event. I had to drive away knowing that my parents and younger brother didn’t have a place to call home and were sleeping on friends’ couches.

I sent an email to two of my nursing professors, Andrea and Catherine, letting them know what had happened. I think I did it more out of shock than seeking comfort. They both reached out to me and even contacted the spiritual life office so they too could connect with me. Rusty, one of our campus pastors, called me and prayed with me as I drove the eight hours back to Oregon. It was something I didn’t know I needed, but it put me at such ease knowing that someone was out there who cared.

My professors could have stopped there, but both of them met with me in person despite COVID restrictions and gave me a hug. Throughout the semester they continually checked in with me and offered to connect me to other resources should I want them.

When all of the fires erupted here in Oregon, I was faced with feelings of anxiousness and restlessness that I have never experienced before. I didn’t realize that the smell of smoke would make me feel so uneasy. I had such a hard time focusing on school and wished with all my might that I could just go home. I felt like the fires and smoke were everywhere – truly a suffocating experience. During this time both my professors and Mitzi from housing reached out to me to check in. They knew that I would probably be uneasy with the smoke and took the time out of their day to see how I was doing.

I’ve always liked my professors at Fox, but simply thought the Be Known promise had to do with them knowing my name. The support I have received during this tragic period of my life has shown me that the Be Known promise at Fox is real and that God is walking with my family and me every step of the way. I can’t imagine going to any other school. Even though my home in California is gone, I feel so incredibly blessed to call Fox my home too.

Sierra Scholtes
Major: Nursing
Year: Senior
Hometown: Vacaville, California

When COVID-19 struck her care facility, Tracy Berg refused to leave her residents alone.

Tracy Berg (G13) has always had a heart for seniors, a quality her friends at George Fox fittingly described as “aggressively trying to help elderly people.”

Do you need help carrying those groceries? Can I walk with you across the street? “My friends would say, ‘They’ve made it this far, they’re walking fine,’” she recalls, laughing. “And I’m like, ‘But their shoes are untied!’”

It was only a matter of time before her passion for senior care led Berg to Marquis Hope Village, a rehabilitation and long-term care facility in Canby, Oregon.

As social services director, her job entails a variety of activities that all boil down to a single mission: advocating for the individual needs and rights of residents. Each morning, she gets in early and reviews the previous night’s report: Are there new residents? Did anyone move rooms? Were there medication changes? Did anyone have a fall? Do families need to be contacted? The latter is a big part of her job.

“I tell families, ‘I’m here. I will care for your loved one so you don’t have to be the caregiver anymore. And I can walk with them through that journey all the way through end of life,” she says. “This isn’t just a job for me. Every single day I come into work, I care so passionately about these people.”

That passion shows well beyond the typical requirements of the job. One of her favorite memories involves a resident who was near the end of his life. He had served in the Navy and was a deep-sea fisherman. “He loved ships. He loved anything related to the water,” she recalls. “So for Halloween I made his wheelchair into a boat. I got him an orange vest, I got him a sailor’s hat with his name on it.”

And so the two of them, both dressed as sailors, motored around the facility in their wheelchair boat. “I’m not a DIY person,” Berg laughs. “I spent way too many hours on that costume. But I have this video of him in the costume, just thrilled, just loving it.”

A few weeks later, the man passed away.

When a resident passes, a white ribbon is placed next to their name on the door to their room. “The morning after, I always come and stand by the door and I’ll usually put my hand on that ribbon and take a minute to go through the memories I had with them,” Berg says. “It’s just my way of saying goodbye.”

It’s a way to grieve, process and move on. To mentally prepare for the next resident that needs her. But nothing could prepare her for June 2020 – the month a COVID-19 outbreak changed everything for Berg and the residents she cares so much for.

“By the time we discovered it – I’m talking like as soon as someone spiked a minimal fever – it had already spread by that point. It didn’t matter,” she says.

Residents were sick. Employees were sick. Berg, too, tested positive. Everyone with COVID was quarantined together, so she kept working. “It was all hands on deck,” she says.

Berg’s responsibility during the crisis was one of the hardest. “It was my job as social services director to call the families and say your loved one tested positive. That was a tough phone call to make.”

Eventually, Berg became too sick to work. She experienced flu-like symptoms, loss of taste, and pain in her legs. She was sent home. But the anxiety of not being there was too much. She had to return. She could still sit with residents so they weren’t alone in their final moments. She could still hold a phone to their ear as family members gathered outside their bedroom window. She could still hold their hand. And so she stayed, being present, giving of herself, loving her residents until the end – aggressively.

For her selfless acts of compassion, Berg was presented with a “Legend Award” from Marquis, for which she is grateful. But not all stories have a happy ending, especially those about COVID. Residents were lost before their time, and Berg still feels the lingering physical and emotional effects of “the worst month of my life” more than a year later.

But during the experience she also felt something else: “I could feel that people were praying for me,” she recalls. “When I had a moment to take a deep breath, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can tangibly feel it.’ It was an incredible experience.”

In the midst of the outbreak, a former roommate from Berg’s George Fox days drove to the facility to encourage her friend. She brought a coffee and waited patiently at the door of the locked-down facility for someone to bring it inside. When the beverage finally made its way to Berg, she looked at it and stopped, tears welling up in her eyes. On the side of the cup, where a name is normally written, was one simple word: “Hero.”

Thanks to a servant engineering team, Evan Bonazzola finally got his day at the gym.

“Hey Todd, guess what day it is?”

That’s the challenge student Evan Bonazzola playfully presents to physics professor Todd Curtis as the pair stand together in the weight room of the Hadlock Student Center on a Friday afternoon.

It’s mid-April, and there is a cacophony of activity in Hadlock at the moment: students are working out, clanging weight machines and plodding on treadmills; a group is playing basketball downstairs, the piercing squeaks of their high tops and thumping dribbles punctuating the atmosphere in familiar juxtaposition; the card-swipe gates at the front entrance offer the occasional electronic de-ding!, inevitably followed by an audible welcome from the front desk attendant; and then there’s the student-curated Spotify playlist sounding throughout the facility.

Despite the surrounding din, three engineering students – looking out of place in their street shoes and blue jeans – are huddled together, focused on making a few final adjustments to a prototype prosthetic device they’ve designed specifically for Bonazzola.

Also an engineering student, Bonazzola was born with symbrachydactyly, a condition characterized by limb abnormalities. His left hand is underdeveloped and prevents him from accomplishing tasks in the same way someone with two fully developed hands might – say, working out at the gym. Bonazzola boasts a refreshingly positive perspective, though, often leveraging his limb difference to make all the stereotypical hand jokes one would expect. If a friend asks him to help move something, for instance, he mischievously replies, “Yeah, I can give you a hand.”

For the most part, Bonazzola can creatively address any issues his smaller left hand presents – which include daily tasks like tying his shoes. Although there are a few activities – like playing the piano and rock climbing – he hasn’t quite figured out yet, there is one pursuit in particular that has loomed large in the back of his mind for several years: pull-ups.

In high school, Bonazzola had to attempt pull-ups for a required physical test. When he struggled to complete one and fell, the P.E. teacher didn’t hesitate asking for the next person in line. Not only that, at the request of his gym instructors, Evan found himself jogging around the track instead of participating in the day’s scheduled activity on more than one occasion. Ever since, he dreamed of one day conquering the weight room.

“Hey Todd, guess what day it is?” The professor isn’t sure. He looks at his watch; he can’t recall the date.

Curtis is one of the faculty advisors for the Servant Engineering program, a two-semester course in which all junior engineering majors enroll. The purpose of the course is to demonstrate how engineering skills can be used to help others, so students are placed in small groups with a faculty advisor and tasked with working on a service-based engineering project during the year. Recent projects have ranged from the immensely practical (designing mirrors for mobility devices) to the extremely involved (developing methods for teaching microfluidics in the public school system). Though diverse, all projects share a common theme: human-centered design, that is, focusing on client problems that actually exist rather than considering problems personally exciting to the engineer.

Two years ago, Curtis decided he wanted his groups to begin working in the area of prosthetics. According to the professor, an abundance of highly developed prostheses perform 90 percent of daily tasks effectively, but there is a narrow gap of activities that even typical prostheses do not accomplish well. What’s more, nearly 60 percent of people with missing upper limbs do not use prostheses simply because they are expensive or uncomfortable.

“We wanted to look at that need and look at how we can come up with task-specific, low-cost prosthetics,” he says.

As a result, Curtis’ three-student Servant Engineering team worked with Bonazzola to develop a prosthetic “hand” that would allow him to exercise in Hadlock, specifically using free weights and doing pull-ups.

“Hey Todd, guess what day it is?” The three engineering students – Gabi Lorenzo, Madi Jones and AJ Atherton – overhear Bonazzola’s question and momentarily stop their conversation. For this engineering team, at least, the day marks a significant milestone in the work they have done to help him achieve his goal of weightlifting and doing pull-ups. After hours of research, interviews, brainstorming (a process they affectionately refer to as “PAINstorming”), and countless iterations and adjustments, they are finally ready for Bonazzola to test out their prototype prosthesis.

One of them invites him over: “Here, try to put this on.”

He slips the brace over his left arm using his right hand. Atherton asks how it feels. Bonazzola struggles locking the carabiner that connects the elbow brace to the wrist brace – it’ll get easier with practice, Lorenzo assures him. He wonders how the elbow brace is supposed to fit; Jones says whatever feels comfortable.

After a couple of minutes, the prosthesis is secure on Bonazzola’s left arm, and everyone turns their attention to the pull-up bar. There is a thick foam pad already set up beneath the bar, no doubt serving as both step stool and safety precaution. Bonazzola hops up, decidedly grips the bar with his right hand and guides the C-hook around the bar with his left. The team watches him from behind. Two pull-ups later, they are all smiling in awe. Bonazzola is smiling, too. He does a couple more pull-ups. Someone utters, “Oh, wow.” And another, “That’s so cool.”

Later, Bonazzola describes the feeling of those first pull-ups: “It’s like being able to run after only being limited to walking, or like running with weights and then having them suddenly fall off.”

Lorenzo captures what the engineers felt: “We never thought he’d be able to do it. We never thought that our design or our bracing system was going to be able to withstand a pull-up. And so the moment he actually did a pull-up, we were like, ‘Wow, that actually worked!’”

After testing the prosthesis on some other workout equipment, the group migrates to the rack of free weights on the south wall. Evan secures a 12.5-pound dumbbell to his left hand using the clamp attachment, then grabs a second 12.5-pound dumbbell with his right hand and begins alternating bicep curls. A brief smile flashes across his face as he lifts his left arm. The heaviest weight he has ever lifted with his left hand before this day was two pounds. And since that first test, he has lifted as much as 25 pounds.

Finished with the free weights, Bonazzola removes the prosthesis. He hands the brace to the student engineers who begin chatting about some minor adjustments they need to make in the next week or two. He approaches Curtis.

Hey Todd, guess what day it is?” The professor comes up blank, so Bonazzola delivers the answer, capturing the significance of all that has just transpired in a way only he can: “It’s Evan-Gets-A-Hand Day!”

If you have a limb difference and are open to exploring solutions with a George Fox Servant Engineering team, they’d love to talk with you. Email Todd Curtis (tcurtis@georgefox.edu) for more information.

His time as an MBA student informs Joe Ahn’s work more than a decade later.

Joe Ahn had it all: A high-profile job in San Francisco at a company with a $700 million marketing budget. He was launching Super Bowl campaigns and rubbing shoulders with the global powers of the advertising world – Facebook, Twitter, Google and LinkedIn among them – at a time social media was just emerging as a marketing phenomenon.

Soon after, it was on to the MRY creative agency to help launch a Super Bowl campaign with Drake as part of the T-Mobile account. 

But something didn’t sit right. It was then Ahn asked himself a question: “How can I use what I’ve learned and my experiences to impact positive change?”

His life hasn’t been the same since.

“I just did a complete 180,” Ahn says of his career shift. “I felt a pull to do something else with my life.”

Initially, that meant a shift to the healthcare field, first as director of social and content marketing for Sutter Health and later as vice president of marketing for Tivity Health. Then, last winter, his desire to promote sustainability and cultivate community in business led to yet another opportunity – this time halfway around the world.

Today, Ahn is global director of marketing for the ECCO footwear company, based at the company’s headquarters in Tønder, Denmark, an outpost about a three hours’ drive from Copenhagen and 20 minutes north of the German border. It is here Ahn has rediscovered why he fell in love with marketing in the first place.

The privately owned ECCO is globally known, with more than 2,500 retail stores in over 100 countries, but unlike the publicly traded behemoths he worked for in the U.S., it’s an enterprise that takes pride in being environmentally friendly while truly getting to know its customers – and one another.

“That was a big appeal for me, having worked in public companies driven by the urgency of meeting the next quarterly earnings goal, rather than focus on long-term sustainability,” says Ahn, a 2010 graduate of George Fox’s full-time MBA program and a 2009 undergraduate marketing alumnus. “My responsibility here is to cultivate community and drive new ways of engaging consumers. Thinking back to [George Fox’s] Be Known promise, there are interesting parallels, as one of our key corporate strategies is to ‘increase our knowns’ – how many consumers we know.”

At a corporate level, that means deepening an understanding of customers’ behaviors, interests and passions, allowing for a more personalized experience when marketing to them. “I was brought here to help answer the questions, ‘What does it mean to be part of a shoe brand community?’ and “What is the consumer benefit we want to create?’ Whether you go into a retail store or navigate online or on social media, we can speak to you as if we know you,” Ahn says.

Beyond its emphasis on consumers, ECCO values relationships both in house and with the up-and-coming generation. “This is a third-generation, family-owned business, and some employees have been here 20 or 30 years,” Ahn says. “The company invests in its people and has created programs to bring in Next Gens from all over the world as part of an intense three-year internship program.”

Ahn was also sold on the company’s commitment to sustainability, as, unlike many other big-name footwear companies, it owns its entire value chain, allowing ECCO to closely monitor its environmental impact at the manufacturing level.

The biggest selling point, however, is the fact Ahn truly has the opportunity to develop relationships that both propel the business and create a supportive community – values he first encountered as an MBA student more than a decade ago.

“The [MBA program’s] emphasis on transformational and servant leadership has always stuck with me as I’ve progressed in my career, and as a people leader it’s something I deeply value,” he says. “The MBA also did a good job of involving us in local community businesses as consultants working through real-life challenges. It took theory and applied it in practical ways that, if a business liked our work, they would implement it and ask for continued support.”

Ahn values his relationships formed at George Fox – he still keeps in touch with classmates, basketball teammates, and a former professor who attended Ahn’s wedding to wife Jillian – and credits his undergraduate and MBA experiences with helping him develop into the businessman he is today.

“I’m grateful for my experience at George Fox,” he says. “It grounded me in my faith and values as a person, and that guides me in how I approach my work. It definitely breathed life into my career and personal development that I may not have received at another university. [Fox] really is all about reinforcing this idea that you can be known and be yourself.”

His advice to young professionals? “Channel your curiosity. For me, the people who stand out are those who express their curiosity and take those proactive steps to understand more about where they hope to work. Take the time to research, have a point of view, and ask questions.”

 “And also, stay humble, hungry, and your authentic self. Because the last thing you want is to be like everyone else.”

Tracy Boyd found community, support and purpose in a group she created.

One soggy, winter day in early 2019, Tracy Boyd’s phone rang. Facebook was on the line.

“We’re thinking about doing something to celebrate International Women’s Day,” the voice on the phone said. “Your name came up.”

Boyd, a mother of four who is blind, serves as president of Mommies with Guides, a Facebook group for blind parents with guide dogs to share the struggles and joys of parenting, offer tips and tricks, and celebrate their trusty canine partners.

In March, the social media platform recognized and honored Boyd as one of nine women who had positively impacted their communities through Facebook. They flew her and her guide dog Chiffon down to the company’s California headquarters, all expenses paid. There, Boyd and the other women participated in a live Facebook video where they talked about the community and support that they had found and built through their Facebook pages.

It was a rare and well-deserved moment of acknowledgement for Boyd. But then, she doesn’t do it for the recognition. Boyd’s story is one of grit, perseverance and active compassion. She has faced countless challenges over the course of her life. Yet, she not only continues to fight, hope and dream for herself; she has built a community that supports and inspires others to do so as well.

“Blindness does not define us,” Boyd says. “We are all kinds of women and men, parents and grandparents, and we participate in parenting just as fully as sighted people.”

Building Community

Boyd was born with congenital glaucoma – a condition in which pressure builds up in the eyes, damaging the optic nerve and gradually causing blindness. The doctors didn’t catch it at first. Then one day, when she was about six months old, her mother opened the blinds in her room to let in the light, and Boyd began to scream.

“I had my first surgery that night,” she says.

Since then, Boyd has had over 100 surgeries and seven cornea transplants to keep the pressure in her eyes under control. In the years to come, her sight gradually deteriorated. By the end of high school, she needed a magnifying glass to read a book. After each of her children was born, a bit more of her sight slipped away, the shapes and colors fading until light and dark were all that remained.

“When I was parenting for the very first time, there was no blind parents’ support group for me,” says Boyd. “I only knew one or two other blind moms, and they were not local.”

There was no one to show her strategies for parenting blind, no one to tell her to safety pin a bell to the back of her toddler’s shirt, to talk through the hard days or celebrate the wins. She had to figure it all out for herself.

Then, in 2013, Boyd attended an event hosted by Guide Dogs for the Blind, and everything changed.

“I was there with my 17-year-old daughter, my six-month-old baby and my husband,” Boyd recalls. “And my baby was moving around and making baby noises.”

“Do you have a baby?” asked a woman sitting at Boyd’s table.
“Yes,” Boyd replied.
“I’m a blind mom, too!” she responded.

By the end of the evening, Boyd had met three other blind moms. Together, they decided to form a Guide Dogs for the Blind alumni group specifically for blind parents with guide dogs. Early on, the group had telephone conference calls once a month, sharing stories and encouraging one another.

“We realized that there weren’t a whole lot of resources out there specifically for blind parents with guide dogs,” says Boyd. “I decided we needed to be bigger. We needed to be able to invite more parents than just people in Portland and Vancouver, and the best way to get out to more people was through Facebook.”

With her daughter’s help, Boyd built the group a Facebook page, and Mommies with Guides was born.

Offering Support

Today, Mommies with Guides boasts 2,400 followers from across the globe. Blind parents share their ups and downs, their triumphs and trials. They celebrate when puppies become fully certified guides, and mourn the heartbreak when an old and faithful companion passes away.

The page is full of photos and stories. In one post, Mommies with Guides secretary Braden Dashney tells the story of walking through a parking lot when his guide dog, Fonzie, suddenly pulled him into the street. He was about to scold the dog when he realized a car had been rapidly backing out of its parking space. It was a close call, and Fonzie had saved his life.

“That’s got to be about five times that he has either refused a command that would have put us in danger, or taken some crazy evasive action to avoid getting hit,” Dashney wrote in the post. “Thanks buddy, extra treats today.”

Many people use the page to ask parenting questions like, “What’s the best way that you have found to feed your baby with a spoon?”

Feeding a squirmy baby is a relatively straightforward task for a sighted person. When you’re blind, it takes some strategy. And so people will give tips like, “I find the corner of my child’s mouth with my finger, then I guide the spoon there with my other hand.”

The group has encouraged people who wanted kids, but thought that their blindness would make the task impossible, to go for it and have children. It’s spurred others to try the guide dog lifestyle.

he community has encouraged Boyd, too. Several years ago, doctors began to suspect that Boyd’s youngest son, now 6, had glaucoma. To be sure, they needed to examine her son under anesthesia. Boyd was terrified. Would her son be OK under anesthesia? Had she somehow passed on her eye disease? She posted about the situation and her fears on Mommies with Guides, and the support poured out.

“All of these other moms and dads shared their stories of how the same thing had happened to them,” Boyd recalls. “It was so reassuring to hear that this was not just a crazy thing that’s happening to me and my family. This is happening to other blind people and their families, too.”

She wasn’t alone. None of them were alone. And that made all the difference.

Showing Grit

Faced with hardship, many people just give up. They adopt a victim mentality or decide they’re incapable of overcoming the obstacles before them. Not Boyd. She’s no quitter. She’s a community builder, an instigator, and, perhaps most importantly, a stubborn, relentless optimist.

“I have never even entertained the idea of ‘I just have to give up’ or ‘I can’t do that,’” says Boyd. “When a challenge is in front of me, I want to get past it, over it, and beyond it. I have appreciated the people who have made a difference in my life by being there for me, by supporting me, by walking through the mud with me. That’s been huge. And so I want to do that for other people.”

Today, in addition to running Mommies with Guides, Boyd is studying clinical mental health counseling as a graduate student at George Fox University. She hopes to become a therapist and help veterans better connect to their communities and to the people in their lives.

“That’s so important for their life and for the lives of the people they love,” she explains.

Boyd believes that her life experience uniquely equips her to speak into struggling veterans’ lives. “Whatever they’re struggling with – maybe it’s some sort of life-changing disability, maybe they came back and the person they are married to is not interested in continuing a relationship – sitting down with a therapist who has been through a lot of challenges themselves makes a difference. I can say, ‘I know that things will get better.’ And they’re going to know that’s authentic.”

For now, Boyd hopes to continue inspiring other blind parents to live their lives to the fullest.

“Blind or not, you can be a fully participating parent,” Boyd says. “I have met so many people who told me that because their mom or dad was blind, they didn’t get to play sports or go swimming when they were growing up … stories of how people in their blindness limited not just themselves but their children. If I could say anything to a blind parent it would be, ‘Raise the bar for yourself so that you raise the bar for your kids.’”

The way Boyd sees it, there has never been a better time in history to be blind than right now. Voice technology and mobile apps make the world so much more accessible for the blind than even a decade ago. The playing field is leveling. For those with a supportive community at their backs and the courage to face challenges head on, the opportunities are there for the taking.

“Don’t let fear stop you,” Boyd says.

She sure hasn’t.

Joseph Espero plans to use his DPT degree to make a difference in the lives of kids.

Espero dressed up as the Black Panther for Halloween

Joseph Espero wants to be the Black Panther of pediatric physical therapy, superhero costume and all.

Espero is currently enrolled in the university’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program after completing his undergraduate degree in exercise science in 2020. His goal is to help children dealing with cancer or neurodevelopmental issues – those not living the life every kid should.

Often these young patients are intimidated by the professional adults around them and tired of the pain. With his own perfectly healthy baby at home, Espero isn’t sure he’ll be able to handle the emotional side of the job, but he sure wants to try.

Through his future vocation, Espero plans to fulfill his calling: to give young children – and particularly kids of color – a voice.

“You know how cool it would be for a kid to look up and see the Black Panther walk in? They get to say, ‘That’s who I’m doing exercises with today.’”

“I have a desire to be a PT, especially for the under-spoken population,” he says. In the same way that actor Chadwick Boseman, as the Black Panther, changed how people of color see themselves, Espero wants to change how kids in therapy view themselves.

“I want to show kids of color this is what we look like. Not all providers do the same thing, and you don’t have to be like everyone out there.”

Espero is concerned about kids without financial resources, too. “I know what it’s like to not have much,” he says. “Kids with the Oregon Health Plan don’t have a choice in providers, who see whatever person is on their schedule.” Just as some kids can’t learn from certain teachers, they can struggle with medical providers, too. “It’s not because the child is incompetent; it’s because the provider is not willing to adapt their way of teaching.”

Espero wants to be a provider who is willing to adapt for a child and encourage them to say what they’re feeling.

“You see these doctors and you’re intimidated because they know 10 times more than you do,” he says. “But doctors don’t know what it’s like to be in your position. They don’t have that perspective.”

An elderly woman at a nursing home in Beaverton, Oregon, first piqued Espero’s interest in physical therapy during high school. A stroke had weakened one side of her body. Espero met her as he shadowed a physical therapist working with her.

“I remember seeing her almost daily, developing a rapport with her, seeing her progress and what the PT did with her,” he says. “She was able to regain left hand mobility – something so small but so essential. I saw this look of disbelief cross her face. That was amazing to me. You can have an impact on people’s lives. You don’t see them just once; you see it through. That’s what’s really special to me.”

Espero had his own experience with a physical therapist several years ago, after herniating a couple of disks in his back and losing sensory and motor function in his left foot. “She saw me once and gave me outdated exercises and information,” he recalls of his experience.

He wants to be a different kind of PT – someone who continues to read the latest research in order to provide the best care. “If you don’t do that, you get left behind and have medical care that doesn’t do anything.”

The best doctors, Espero believes, combine their knowledge with humility and a determination to continually learn. “It’s honestly not by my hands; it’s by the patient’s hands. They have all the tools to get better; I’m just the mediator.”

And while he’s helping their bodies, Espero hopes he’s opening their minds to life’s possibilities.

“The most important thing for me is that my child wants to be something of her own. I hope I give her the strength and the knowledge that she can do anything – doctor, politics – if she works hard enough. And my impact goes even further for the children I see, so they can do the same thing. It’s my vocation. That’s why God put me here – so I can spread hope to other people.”

Kade Sorenson found the Christ-centered friendships he had always been looking for.

A way that I have grown in my faith this year is through community. I am a transfer student and this was my first year at George Fox. During my freshman year at another university, I struggled to make meaningful friendships, and it was a very lonely time in my life. I decided to transfer, and I knew that I wanted to go to George Fox.

Over the summer I prayed almost every day asking that God would provide me with meaningful friendships that would help me to become more like Christ. It was honestly difficult for me to pray that prayer after my freshman year of college because I did not have a ton of hope.

When I got to George Fox I was welcomed with open arms. I have met some incredible people here. I meet with two of my best buddies once a week, where we check in on each other and challenge each other in our walks with the Lord. We ask each other intentional questions, and it has been a great opportunity for me to grow.

Brian and Grant are two guys I know I could talk to about anything – they have truly been friends that have spurred me on to be more like Christ. On the first day of class this year, I wrote down prayers I wanted God to answer. Meaningful, Christ-centered friendships was the top one. I recently went back to my journal and put a big checkmark next to that prayer request!”
 – Kade Sorenson

Each summer, a group of physical therapy students and staff treat hundreds in Uganda.

Photos by Moses Hooper

Each summer, a group of George Fox Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students, faculty and alumni travels to Uganda, treating hundreds with injuries and disabilities.

Last summer marked the sixth year the DPT team has made the journey to the capital city of Kampala, where they served in two boarding schools for children with special needs, then made the eight-hour journey to a medical center in the remote town of Paidha to work alongside Ugandan physicians and medical technicians.

The results have been life-changing: Children who were once wheelchair-bound can now walk. Adults with painful injuries from years of hard work receive relief. And the George Fox students who take part in the experience grow exponentially as clinicians and people.

This 16 year-old-girl was wheelchair-bound until last year. She can now walk with assistance and also has the support and encouragement of her classmates to push her wheelchair and walk with her.

Ed Cheng and Rachel Lineback modify and repair a pair of orthotics. When this patient arrived at Kireka School she was unable to lift her head or walk. With training and guidance, she is now holding her head up, smiling, and even walking with assistance.

At a physical therapy clinic in Paidha, a village in northern Uganda, Ed and Kevin Coriano work with a local translator to treat a man with back pain.

A student in the life skills course at Kireka School shows Lindsey Klemmer her strategies for bead work. She has visual impairment, and together they are thinking up strategies to be more accurate when threading a needle. Older kids often return to their home communities and help earn for the family using the skills they’ve gained at Kireka.

Rachel Cundy acquired a shoe to address a leg length discrepancy due to this student’s cerebral palsy. This created a special bond between the two of them.

Kara Oshiro and George Fox alumna Katie Porter, a pediatric physical therapist, treat a child with cerebral palsy who has a foot deformity. Once up and standing for the first time, she became very motivated to walk.

Caleb Zimmerman draws with one of the Ugandan students. Due to her inability to perform fine motor work with her hands, she verbally guided Caleb to create the drawing of a zebra. He was also able to modify the crayons to allow her to hold them in her mouth.

The mother of a young child with cerebral palsy seeks guidance from Kevin and Katie.

Maddie was feeling anxious about her first big presentation, until an unexpected visit.

“On a late Sunday night, I went to an empty classroom in the Stevens Center to practice a presentation I had to give the next morning.

Fun Fact about Maddie
“I have a dream career, and it’s been on my heart and my mind since I was a little kid. My whole life I’ve wanted to work for Disney as an Imagineer.”

I was feeling pretty unprepared and anxious about the presentation, so I was just rehearsing all my material when the classroom door opened. A security guard walked in to check who was in the room. He didn’t see me at first. I said hello and startled him!

I was around the corner so he didn’t see me, but after I apologized for scaring him, he, without hesitation, sat down at a desk and asked me to give my presentation. With open ears and a kind heart, he listened to my presentation and gave me extremely helpful feedback. To my surprise, he revealed that he used to be a language arts teacher for 20 years! He joked about coming to watch my presentation and helped calm my nerves about my public speaking assignment. It was at that moment I felt known not only as a student but as a person in this community. It was a really sweet experience, and he didn’t even hesitate to listen to me.”

Maddie Cognasso
Major: Interior Design
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Olympia, Washington

In an industry driven by likes, shares and followers, Greg Lutze stands out.

Greg Lutze is a busy man. As cofounder and chief experience officer of VSCO (Visual Supply Company), the 2000 George Fox alumnus is the head and heart behind one of the top creative tools on the market. VSCO’s mobile photo editing and sharing app has more than 45 million active users, a robust following of talented creatives and a stack of awards.

Yet, despite the success and accolades, Lutze has managed to stay grounded.

In a market that demands users chase likes, shares and followers, he built a product that fosters authentic creativity, connection and growth. In a business culture that lauds loud achievers, he leads with quiet character. And for Lutze, that begins with family.

“Yes, I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve got a startup. I’ve got to keep pushing forward with that,” Lutze says, speaking to George Fox business and art students. “But ultimately I’m a dad. I’m a husband.”

“We have to prioritize what’s important,” he adds. “I don’t schedule meetings after 4 p.m. so I can get home with the kids. I try to take Thursday mornings off so I can go get coffee with my wife. It’s not perfect. Sometimes I have to travel. But I think just acknowledging that is a start.”

It’s not the message one might expect from a young executive thriving in the hard-charging tech world. But then again, Lutze and the company he helped create are far from typical.

Stepping into the Gap

Lutze graduated from George Fox with a degree in business administration. He spent the next decade working as a designer and creative director for agencies in Seattle and New York, including serving as an art director for Microsoft’s Xbox team. Much of his work was in the music industry, creating websites and branding for rock stars and hip-hop artists. It was one of Lutze’s designs, a website for the indie band Jimmy Eat World, that caught the attention of VSCO CEO and cofounder Joel Flory.

“We formed a relationship from that and started talking about everything: faith, family, what would a creative company that we would really be proud of look like?” says Lutze.

Those conversations soon transformed into action, and in 2011 Lutze and Flory cofounded VSCO in Oakland, California. They entered the market at the perfect time. In 2011, most people were still using Instagram as their primary tool to edit and share photos. When Instagram was bought by Facebook and evolved into a full-blown social network, its atmosphere and content changed. With the change, a vacuum emerged in the mobile photo editing market, and in stepped VSCO.

Since its inception, VSCO has garnered more than 50 million downloads, and has been named Apple’s “App of the Year,” one of Google Play’s “Best Apps,” and one of Fast Company’s “Top 10 Most Innovative Companies on Social Media.” The speed with which the app gained popularity was no less thrilling. When VSCO launched version 2.0 in 2013, it had over 1 million downloads in the first week.

VSCO combines powerful photo-editing tools with a creative community. Built to be accessible and empowering to beginners, the app provides preset filters (or “presets” in VSCO lingo) that endow mobile photos with the visual qualities of old-school film. For more advanced photographers and designers, the editing options go far more granular than Instagram or your run-of-the-mill photo editing app, allowing users to crop, sharpen and adjust everything from white balance to skin tone. You can even take photos in RAW format, enabling even greater creative control in edits.

Cultivating Creativity

On the social side, VSCO’s Discover page allows users to browse, find and follow other artists for inspiration. Looking to build a space for people to take creative risks, grow and discover the fruits of others’ creativity without the pressure inherent to social media platforms, Lutze and Flory intentionally left out popularity metrics – no public follower counts, likes or comments.

“We don’t have numbers. Those just aren’t important to us,” Lutze says. “As a result, you get people who show who they are, not who they hope someone else sees them as. It’s a different dynamic, and we want that creativity. We want that place where people can be honest, where they can be themselves and know that they are valuable just as they are.”

In a 2017 Creative Mornings talk, Lutze told the story of a friend who was passionate about portrait photography, but because portraits didn’t garner likes and comments on Instagram, he only posted landscapes. His creative passion remained hidden, and to Lutze, that was incredibly sad.

“Social media is fun,” he admitted. “It’s a way to connect people. It’s a great marketing tool. On the flip side, there’s a lot of mental health issues that are evolving from it. People feel an incredible amount of pressure to perform, to show who they’re not, and that can be wearing on your spirit.”

Most profit-driven businesspeople would look at VSCO’s predecessors and competitors and see only dollar signs. But Lutze is driven by a vision to empower and connect culture creators. Though he does not consider VSCO a “Christian company,” his faith and character have informed VSCO’s culture, values and even the way the app itself is designed.

“On any given day, in every country in the world, millions of people are using what Greg has helped create to express themselves and grow as creatives,” says Flory. “One of the things that has impressed me most about Greg … is that it is never about the numbers, the fame, or even what the potential personal gain could be. It has always been and will always be about the individual creators whose lives are being impacted by VSCO.”

Passion + Skills + Values

After a recent visit to campus, Lutze walked away excited and hopeful for the future entrepreneurs and creative graduates coming out of George Fox.

“You can sense this passion in them, this drive,” he says. “They’re really tying together what they’re learning about business to their values and faith. That combination is such an important one.”

That combination of passion, knowledge and character is rare, but it’s one that Lutze exemplifies. He leads amidst a business culture that glorifies long hours and workaholics. There’s always one more meeting, one more project, one more thing to do. Yet, in the midst of the madness, he has managed to build a company culture that values kindness and balance, and a product that cultivates fearless creativity and encourages artists around the world to be themselves.

“Sometimes standing tall is about being humble,” Lutze says. “It’s about listening. It’s about doing the quiet things that go unnoticed. It’s about admitting you’re wrong.”

“At VSCO, our core values are ‘Always Moving Forward,’ ‘Be You,’ ‘Build Together,’ ‘Creator First’ and ‘Stay Humble,’” Flory adds. “Those values were born out of Greg’s leadership style, and whenever I talk to new employees I tell them to watch Greg as he lives these five values every day. Greg has the ‘superpower’ of bringing people together and making everyone feel heard.”

Sometimes, courage looks like quiet tenacity: choosing to model character and balance rather than bravado and dominance. Where most bow and scrape to the almighty dollar and the tyranny of more, Lutze is standing tall.