Join the Movement

2016 – Present:  Sisters Rising Worldwide
People across each generation alive today long for a reasoned voice and help for our entire world as those poor get poorer, the environment freefalls, and the complexity of poverty seems insurmountable.  However, there are 650,000 Sisters around the world who can name the underlying root causes of the poverty around them!  We need to hear their voice and help them solve the root causes as well as treat the symptoms in order to turn things around.  But, as luck would have it, there did not exist a technology to connect these Sisters to each other or to resources.  I gathered a core of other visionary Sisters to help figure out how to get a platform built for Sisters as well as a system to connect them to resources.  Together we built a world-class board of directors and a growing core of volunteers.  Since we have developed a secure technology platform and will roll it out this month. Sisters Rising Worldwide has been on national TV, had articles published nationally and internationally.  SRW has been invited to partner with Alight—where we have worked together helping Sisters during Covid-19 in 32 countries.  We have raised funds for Sisters programs internationally, and only now are we beginning to fundraise for sustainability. In addition, A nearby University is interested in partnering with SRW in all aspects.

2002  The St. Joseph Worker Program
From my work in the early 1990s with the elementary schools, I saw a great need and huge opportunity to mentor young women as leaders in the way of the Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1998 I found 2 Sisters of St. Joseph who had deep personal experience as volunteers. We visioned a volunteer program with Sisters that could eventually be replicated across the United States and perhaps the world—wherever there are Sisters. We expanded our group to include many more Sisters and lay members to think through all the details. The program was founded in 2002 and run by a lay member of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Within ten years, the program was franchised across the USA. Today, the Sisters of St. Joseph alone has over 150 St. Joseph Worker alums who claim still to be St. Joseph Workers. St. Joseph Workers are young women who spend a year with Sisters and learn leadership, community/simplicity, spirituality, and social justice. This program is still going strong.

1993 – 2013  Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Ministries Foundation
The St. Paul, Minneapolis metropolitan had become a resettlement area for immigrants from all over the world. Societal needs became more complex and extreme. Sisters of St. Joseph responded to needs as they surfaced. By 1993 the Sisters needed help to fund the works established as there was no end in sight to the needs. They invited me to help found and run a foundation to fund the programs of the Sisters. The Ministries Foundation board and staff helped raise an endowment approaching 20 million by the time I stepped down and raised an additional $2 million in grants and gifts. The foundation is still going strong.

1987-91: Curriculum Coordinator for the St. Paul MPLS Archdiocesan Schools
Computer labs were just beginning to be required in elementary schools during these years. In 1987 suburban schools had labs, but the city and inner-city schools struggled to afford them. With the ingenuity of the school librarians and computer teachers across all 105 schools, together we leveraged enough computers for all. We went from a school system with few computers to the largest purchasing agent in MN. In 1991 the school principals were introduced to email technology as well as online learning. A grant was paid to fully outfit three schools—two high schools and one elementary–with the technology for interactive classes. This enabled the educators and students to experience first-hand the potential of the technology that would affect all education in the decade to come.