October 2022
About
Department/School/Division: CAS Dean’s Office
Campus: LSC
Years at Loyola: 1
What is your favorite thing about working at Loyola? I work with a really great team and I feel like what I do is actually impactful. I came from a corporate environment where labor and effort were essentially tossed into an abyss; it’s great to have a position where my work really matters.
What is your most memorable achievement as a Loyola employee? I was really impressed with the cheer rally we did for incoming students. To really show up and voice our support for the students was very impactful; they’re why we’re here and it was great to greet them that way.
What does Loyola's mission mean to you? Expanding knowledge and working in service are both important to me, they always have been. My mom has a Master’s in Journalism and my grandma was a librarian; “look it up” was ingrained in me from a very young age. My first job, at age 15, was working at a camp for people with disabilities. I continued that work as a volunteer with special needs students at my high school and even now I work to help people in need any way I can, even if it’s just handing out blankets at the tent cities near my apartment.
What motivates you to succeed each and every day? In the years immediately preceding my time at Loyola, I was walking with a cane due to a major injury I’d sustained. I was able to stop using my cane around the time I joined the staff at Loyola. Since then, every day I get up and remind myself that I can walk unaided now, and that I’m not facing all the troubles that come with being a person with a disability. I still have some trouble but I don’t take for granted that I can walk home a few days a week – about a mile and a half. That was impossible just a few years ago. When you find yourself having to learn how to walk again in your 40s, and succeeding, you can only take that momentum and roll it into other parts of your life: your work, your relationships, your service to your community, everywhere.
Tell us how you show your Rambler pride: I show up when called upon, whether to cheer on our incoming students or participate in the College of Arts and Sciences Grants Advisory Board. I also get to know the University’s neighbors – even their dogs! – as I walk around the neighborhood.
Tell us something most people at Loyola would be surprised to know about you: I once met Steve Martin while he was filming a movie in Oak Park. This was before smart phones so I couldn’t take a selfie and all I had on me for him to sign was the copy of Dante’s Inferno that I was reading. I handed it to him and he said, “You know I didn’t write this, right?” I was star-struck and could only stammer, “Thank you, Steve Martin, thanks.” So now I have a copy of Dante’s Inferno signed by Steve Martin and Helena Bonham Carter, who was also filming that movie with him. (The movie was “Novocaine,” it came out in 2001 and I’ve never seen it.)
