It was May of 2017, and she had just graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Spanish and justice and peace studies. Niebanck planned to spend the summer relaxing, traveling and enjoying her time with friends before moving to Boston for a job in technology sales. The post-college life she envisioned for herself was just beginning. 

But 10 days after she walked across Healy Lawn as part of the , Niebanck had a stroke during a scheduled brain surgery. She woke up paralyzed on the left side of her body and couldn’t speak or swallow. Suddenly, Niebanck’s full-time job became rehabilitation.

“I had to learn how to walk, how to sit up in a wheelchair, how to speak, how to swallow,” she said. “I had to do everything all over again.”

Niebanck watched her friends move to different cities, launch their careers and live what seemed like glamorous lives in her mind. The sense of being left behind grew. But conversations with her mentors, including a Georgetown professor, shifted her perspective and gave her a new mantra: Obstacles are opportunities.

In the years since Niebanck’s stroke, she has published two books — Fashion Fwd: How Today’s Culture Shapes Tomorrow’s Fashion and Fast Fwd: The Fully Recovered Mindset — and has become a public speaker and advocate for stroke survivors. In 2023, the World Health Organization invited Niebanck to speak about her rehab journey at its in Geneva, Switzerland. 

“We all experience obstacles in our lives,” she said. “It’s about how we respond to it and decide how to turn that into something positive for ourselves and for our communities.”

Finding a Place to Thrive

Niebanck grew up in Chatham, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, as the oldest of three siblings. 

She knew from a young age that she wanted to study languages, and came to Georgetown because of its and location in Washington, DC. 

“It just seemed like a place where I could thrive,” Niebanck said. 

At Georgetown, she joined an investment club at Georgetown Collegiate Investors, where she rose to a leadership position. She volunteered as an English language tutor for low-income immigrant families in DC through the and participated in the and . Niebanck also worked as a front desk clerk for the .

In her sophomore year, she became an Entrepreneurship Fellow through the McDonough School of Business. 

“One of the things that I loved the most about Georgetown was that everyone was so driven and passionate about something,” Niebanck said. “I found it really refreshing that everyone was motivated and hard working and had diverse areas of interest, and we could all collaborate together.”

As a senior, she took the Launching the Venture course with , an adjunct professor in the McDonough School of Business who would become one of her closest and most influential mentors.

Niebanck looked forward to the path she thought lay ahead after graduation. She didn’t even stress or think about her upcoming brain surgery. 

Since childhood, Niebanck had dealt with migraines, culminating in a series of migraines that lasted more than 20 days during high school. Doctors her with a in the right occipital lobe of her brain. She elected to have brain surgery after college to remove the risk of a potential rupture.

“In my mind, it was just like, oh, this is just a thing that’s gonna have to happen, and then, you know, I’ll rest for a month, and I’ll be fine,” she said.

‘What Really Matters’

Before surgery, Niebanck had a pre-operative procedure. It caused a blood clot in her brain that burst, leading to a brain hemorrhage. She was rushed into emergency surgery. 

After her stroke, Niebanck spent 15 days in the intensive care unit, five weeks as an inpatient and two and half years as an outpatient.

Niebanck stayed in touch with Koester after graduation, and during one of their conversations while Niebanck was struggling with the constant physical and cognitive and speech therapy, Koester encouraged her to view the stroke as an opportunity to explore her interests and dive into her passions. 

“He was like, if you could do anything and work any job, what would you do?” Niebanck said.

For Koester, Niebanck embodies the idea of cura personalis, or care of the whole person, through her willingness and ability to inspire others with her story.

“Maddi is one of those people who never sought recognition, but her actions day in and day out brought people hope, joy and lessons for their own journeys,” Koester said. “I think what’s amazing about her is she never once let any limitations she faced as a stroke survivor slow her down. In fact, quite the opposite. She was the one who wouldn’t let others slow her down.”

Niebanck describes Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., as another influential figure in her recovery journey. Carnes, the vice president for mission and ministry who taught in Georgetown’s Department of Government and School of Foreign Service from 2009 to 2024, met Niebanck through her work for CLAS. Carnes said that Niebanck “points us to what really matters.”

“She kept her eyes on what was possible, and this has allowed her to make such amazing progress, and eventually to succeed in her career, and as an author, and in so many other ways,” he said. “But it’s not the success or the stroke that defines her. It’s the spirit that beats in her heart and has nourished her to this point, and the way she shares that spirit generously with others.”

Building a Supportive Community

When Koester challenged Niebanck to think of her dream job, she thought back to a self-published fashion magazine — Passion for Fashion — she designed in eighth grade. 

On the cover is her younger sister, Bridget, striking a model pose. Colorful headlines coat the page: “What’s in Style?”, “A Day in the Life of Model Bridget Niebanck”, “Fashion Advice: Just Be Yourself!”

Niebanck’s first job after her stroke was as a reinsurance underwriter for a Spanish company. But while she was rehabbing, Niebanck reached out to her network and cold emailed people for connections in the fashion industry. This time would eventually lead to her first book, Fashion Fwd, published in 2018, which explored fashion trends and how the fashion landscape was evolving.

“I interviewed everyone from small business owners to fashion executives to the [former] Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan,” Niebanck said.

She also worked for three years as the client relations coordinator for Hermès, a French luxury goods company, and is now a marketing manager for Cionic, a biotechnology startup that makes clothing to aid mobility. 

Today, Niebanck lives independently and works full-time in New York City, but still struggles with her vision. She lost half of her peripheral vision on the left side of both of her eyes. She does not drive.

“When I’m walking down the busy streets of New York City, I have to constantly scan and turn my head to make sure I’m not missing anything,” Niebanck said. “I get bumped into all the time.”

For a while, she said, the challenges of her recovery left her dejected and questioning, “What did I do to deserve this?”

But while writing her second book, Fast Fwd, published in 2020, Niebanck started to build a community of stroke survivors. She decided to share her journey with the public in hopes of meeting others with similar stories.

Since then, she has chronicling her experiences and co-hosted a live video every Sunday with another stroke survivor on . Niebanck has also given talks about her journey to college students. 

More recently started hosting , where stroke survivors and caregivers get together in person to “connect with others who share similar experiences and build a supportive community.” Niebanck has hosted four so far, with the first summit taking place in New York City in April 2024 and the most recent in Birmingham, Alabama, this October.

“Real life events are super impactful for people to be able to connect with the community and meet other people who are like them,” she said.

Embracing New Opportunities

There is a specific moment that Niebanck remembers as an inpatient.

She was walking up and down the hall in the hospital with her cane, trailed by her mother pushing her wheelchair. She passed the rooms of other patients and thought to herself, “I am so lucky and fortunate that I have this opportunity to work hard.”

Niebanck credits her family members, friends, New Jersey network, Georgetown community and the people she met in rehab for keeping her motivated. By working on her recovery, she wanted to show herself and her supporters that there is life after a stroke, Niebanck said.

“I don’t let my disability stop me or hold me back from achieving the things that I want to in my life,” she said. “Obviously I had a stroke, but I view it as a testament to my resilience and my ability to adapt and overcome and take a different step — literally and figuratively.”

Niebanck thinks back to when she was on the Hilltop and wants students to remain open minded to opportunities they might not have considered in school. If she hadn’t, Niebanck said, she would never have written one book, let alone two, or become a public speaker and disability advocate. The unexpected things that happen in life aren’t necessarily an ending, she said. They can also be a new beginning. 

“Your path can change,” Niebanck said. “It will change, actually, and that’s okay.”

During the trip, the group spent a few days at the (NCTC), a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conference and training center, met with local politicians, artists, environmentalists and nonprofit leaders and toured the historic homes of local residents. 

“The goal of the whole trip and this experience was to provide our students with avenues to learn from different individuals and different sectors of the social impact space directly by visiting with them in their own spaces and to see the work that’s going on in Shepherdstown,” said Thom Chiarolanzio, the senior associate dean in the College who helped launch SRN in 2019.

Mary Fortuna (C’89), a member of the SRN Board of Advisors who lives in Shepherdstown, proposed the idea of bringing students to the town last spring, and was instrumental in organizing the trip’s itinerary and lineup of speakers that included the .

Fortuna is an alumna of the College’s , which influenced SRN’s cohort and mentorship-based model. SRN has around 30 total students and is open to rising College sophomores, juniors and seniors. Fortuna wanted to use the trip to introduce students to Shepherdstown and give them opportunities for personal connections with its leaders.

“I wanted the students to learn from their personal anecdotes — what’s been difficult, the pivots they’ve made and their successes and failures,” Fortuna said.

Meaningful Outdoor Experiences

When Daisy Fynewever (C’26) first arrived at Georgetown, she felt she needed to save the world.

But her time on the Hilltop and with SRN has opened her eyes to the possibility of making a difference in smaller communities and at the grassroots level. The trip to Shepherdstown reinforced that in her mind, said Fynewever, who is double majoring in environmental biology and justice and peace studies with a minor in Spanish. 

“I think we’re used to hearing about national and international organizations, so seeing the type of changes that can be made in a small community through a tight knit network of people was really interesting and super inspiring,” she said.  

One speaker that Fynewever connected with in particular was , the executive director of the Potomac Valley Audubon Society.

During her talk, which took place during a morning hike through the , Alexander spoke about how meaningful childhood experiences in the outdoors often leads to people caring about the natural world as an adult. She helps create those opportunities through events like youth day camps.

“I’ve seen so many kids grow up through our programs and they’re now environmental lawyers, they work for Habitat for Humanity, just so many incredible stories of how these campers have grown up to do good work,” she said.

Over the summer, Fynewever worked for , the senior scientist for West Virginia Rivers, a nonprofit organization, and speaker for the SRN trip. In her internship, which was supported by an SRN stipend, Fynewever worked on a research project exploring the link between ambient water quality and cancer incidents. 

Hitt, a tenth-generation West Virginian and former research fish biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, shared lessons he learned from his career in the federal government and nonprofit space. 

He asked students to think of their future careers by drawing a Venn diagram that includes three circles: 1) What are you good at? 2) What does the world need? 3) What brings you joy?

“What you’re looking for is, where is that overlap? That will guide your next steps,” Hitt said.

The students also heard from Maria Parisi, a who recently retired from NCTC.

“It was super interesting to see how each of the speakers had a different perspective on the best way to make a difference and the best way to do social impact work,” Fynewever said. “And I think that we need all of those perspectives to build the future that we want to see.”

Preserving Arts and History

For Cici Sprouse (C’26), the trip spotlighted the importance of the arts and historic preservation for social impact work. Shepherdstown, , is known for its historic architecture and vibrant arts scene.

“It was really, really cool to see how arts and culture were huge in creating this sense of identity and also instilling a sense of civic duty,” said Sprouse, a justice and peace studies major who is minoring in Spanish and government.

, the festival director of the American Conservation Film Festival, shared with the group that she accepted her job in part because of the ability for “stories to change hearts and minds.” As an example, the students watched a screening of , one of the films shown at the festival this March. The documentary features Zambian attorney (L’13) and follows journalists as they investigate the dire environmental consequences of foreign governments and private investors seizing food and water resources around the world.

“The Grab was extremely impactful, because it bridged the social impact lens and environmental conservation lens that we were exploring on this trip,” said Madison Ross (C’27), a government major who is minoring in .

Students also met , the artistic director for the Contemporary American Theater Festival. The mission of the festival is to produce and develop with a vision of being the ultimate theater experience for artists and audiences. 

In her talk, McKowen highlighted the beneficial impact of arts on someone’s health and wellness and the festival’s commitment to its social values and the local economic impact. 

Eliana Mlawski (C’26), a government and Spanish double major pursuing a minor in , found McKowen’s session particularly inspiring for emphasizing the value of the arts in Shepherdstown.

“The importance of local organizing and action is huge, and sometimes can be forgotten, but I think this trip was a really fun way to deep dive to see that impact,” she said.

Social impact can mean preserving history, as well.

When the students arrived at O’Hurley’s General Store, a group of musicians treated them to a , held every Thursday night year-round. The musicians sat in a circle and played various instruments, including the guitar, harp, banjo, mandolin and violin. These jam sessions have continued for , preserving a piece of Shepherdstown that has been passed down for generations. 

“It might not seem like it is directly related to social impact upon first glance,” Ross said. “But I think the preservation of artistic culture is so important to maintain that community. It was so cool to see that they were still doing it.”

On the final day, students went on a tour of the Historic Shepherdstown Museum located in , led in part by John Kavaliunas (F’68, G’73), visited residents Pia Peltola and Andy Singletary at their re-imagined loft-style home in the , explored the with owners Adam Thomas and Shannon Thomas and learned about the by Rod Glover and Tom Mayes.  

The group also spoke with the co-owner of the Shepherdstown Opera House, Steve Pearson (MBA’92), who completed a full rehabilitation of the structure in 2023. Local artist and professor of art at Shepherd University, , gave a public art demonstration, and the students wrapped up the weekend with a walking tour of Shepherdstown with , an associate professor of history at Shepherd University.  

“The word that really came to mind for me was civic duty,” Sprouse said. “Every person that we talked to felt this responsibility to improve their community in the way that they saw that they could.”

Socially Responsible Careers

The Shepherdstown trip broadened the perspective on socially responsible careers for the students.

“SRN has kind of taught me that being mission driven in your career doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to work at a nonprofit,” Sprouse said.

“I think that the entire trip as a whole gave me a wider overview of what having a socially impactful life looks like and also the type of people that care about social impact work,” said Ashland Ross (C’28), who is majoring in the and minoring in environment and sustainability. 

Ross is interested in doing work in the environmental justice space with the intention of going to law school after graduation. Being on the trip provided her with a sense of community with other people who are passionate about social impact work and related career paths, she said.

Life as a college student can be exceptionally busy, Mlawski said, with students being pulled in multiple directions. The trip, therefore, allowed them to pause and listen to people who found a fulfilling career by following their passions, she said. 

“I’m pursuing international environmental work, which can feel really challenging sometimes,” Mlawski said. “So understanding how other people have navigated their own careers to make it work is invaluable.”

(Top photo courtesy of the West Virginia Department of Tourism)

By housing the initiative in historic Old North – the oldest academic building on the Hilltop – the university is symbolically and formally recommitting to, and celebrating, the humanities. Since the university’s founding in 1789, the humanities have been central to a Georgetown education. 

Today, they offer students an entry point into interdisciplinary research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge and facilitates journeys of personal growth.

“The humanities will broaden a student’s perspective of the world around us through a deeper understanding of the human condition and cultures,”  said Toni Boucher, (P’98, ‘00, ‘04), one of the initiative’s founding donors. “The skills developed through the humanities include communication, writing, evaluation of ideas, problem-solving and critical thinking skills, which are essential in any profession.”

Getting Into the Gilded Age

Davis Fellow Melinda Reed (C’25) spent the summer bringing the humanities into her personal passion project, a novel set in the Gilded Age. 

“I wanted to turn a novel I’d started as a teenager into a historically accurate, textured work that I could send to literary agencies,” said Reed, a justice and peace studies major and creative writing minor. “In service of that specific personal goal, my alien-in-the-archives mentality worked—it allowed me to be curious and to approach my research with the mind of an artist as well as a historian.”

Reed began working on the book when she was 16 during a summer writing camp at Georgetown.  

“We went to the National Gallery of Art and were supposed to write something based on a painting,” said Reed. “So, I picked a painting, “Study of Lilia” by Carolus-Duran, and started writing what would become my first novel that I finished in quarantine. Fast forward five years and I started building an academic project around my creative writing, realizing that there were a lot of gaps in that novel because originally I was writing it for fun and not for historical accuracy.”

The book begins the same year Carolus-Duran painted his piece: 1887. A bildungsroman, it follows 19-year-old Lilia Daley from her sheltered rural life through an unplanned pregnancy and a clash of cultures as she begins working as a maid for a wealthy family on the New England coast. 

Reed cites several faculty and staff members at Georgetown as being instrumental to the completion of the project, including creative writing professor and historian , who helped point her in the right direction when she began doing research. Outside of class, Reed worked as a student employee at the Center for , where the  staff were able to help her reframe her creative project as a piece of academic research. 

Reed began her summer in Rhode Island, where she conducted formal research and informal exploration of one of the settings in her work. 

“I’d visited Newport when I was a kid and I remembered these mansions that are typically associated with the Gilded Age and the incredible amount of wealth that certain families had to have these summer homes on the coast,” said Reed. “I was there looking at the current experience and talking to anybody who would talk to me–all of the tour guides were lovely and would talk about the period and help me get a sense of the physical space that the story was set in.” 

Once Reed was back home in New Jersey, she began commuting into New York City to do archival research. There, she looked through journals and letters from the Gilded Age to get a firsthand look at how her characters should speak, act, and think. 

“I got so invested in the stories of the people that I was reading about–reading very personal documents that they probably never intended for anyone else to look at,” said Reed. “I was very aware of that kind of privilege and that distant violation of privacy–to be able to read these documents and meet people who had lived so long ago and had all these emotions and feelings that they put on the page. I honestly felt honored to get a glimpse into their lives.” 

“After doing the research, I realized how much work the book needs in order to make it something I’m willing to send out. Now, I have a clearer sense of what I want the book to look like. 

“Research, broadly defined, is the process of discovery,” said Reed. “But in our attempt to define it more specifically, we’ve narrowed our understanding of what research can be, creating laws and a locked gate professing that only the qualified are allowed to enter and discover for themselves.”

Reconstructing Paradise in the Humanities

Inspiration struck Alex Wang (C’25) during an introductory English literature course when she first read John Milton’s Paradise Lost. 

“All the texts we were reading were canonized—that’s why they’re in a survey course,” said Wang. “I read Paradise Lost and it was such a long, dense, and incredibly beautiful text. It was so good and so amazing, but in many ways it didn’t provide a foundational story that was relatable to me, personally, and to the community that I identify with.”

Wang, who also received a Davis Fellowship to pursue her humanities research over the summer, scripted a one-act theatrical adaptation of Paradise Lost. At the end of the summer, she marked the completion of her script with a reading staged and attended by her close friends.

“I sought to create a world, a paradise, that I wish to live in,” said Wang. “Even with minimal tech, I attempted to envision a coherent space. Having been a director and designer, I often see a world on stage more vividly than I can on paper—and that’s where the audience comes in.”

Wang is a double major in English and political economy with a minor in theater and performance studies. 

“Paradise Lost can establish aesthetics often aligning with mainstream productions, I sought to create a world, a paradise, that I wish to live in. Even with minimal tech, I attempted to envision a coherent space. Having been a director and designer, I often see a world on stage more vividly than I can on paper—and that’s where the audience comes in.

“Universal might not be the right word, but I believe that the script reflects a queer experience that is not just Chinese or only related to one religion,” said Wang. “I hope this work is the first step toward creating more intersectional and cross-cultural projects.”  

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Georgetown Opens New Hub for the Humanities on Hilltop Campus

Georgetown celebrated the opening of a dedicated space for the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, a university-wide project that aims to promote and strengthen studies in the humanities.

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Heidt is one of just 26 scholars from the United States to receive the scholarship. Established in 2000 with a $210 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the scholarship selects promising young people from around the world who demonstrate outstanding intellectual ability, a commitment to improving the lives of others and leadership potential. 

At Cambridge, Heidt will pursue a Master of Philosophy in development studies. She is interested in how global institutions can integrate victim-centered, trauma-informed support systems in post-conflict situations. Specifically, Heidt plans to research how international law can support gender equality and development in Sudan. 

People-Focused Post-Conflict Solutions

“Georgetown has pushed me to think critically about the most vulnerable people in global society and my role in the interlocking fields of development and peacebuilding,” Heidt said. “My coursework in peace and conflict studies exposed that the need for development is most dire in states which are experiencing active conflict or have recently emerged from conflict.”

As an undergraduate, Heidt has already been probing questions of conflict and healing inside the classroom and out in the wider world. Last summer, Heidt supported Just Grace, a non-profit located in Cape Town, South Africa that promotes community development in Langa Township. 

“Working on the ground in the post-apartheid state, I was able to see how interdisciplinary development mechanisms counteracted the deficit,” said Heidt. “I observed how this community-based organization equipped individuals with professional skills – providing barista training or interview preparation directly contributed to hundreds of new jobs.”

Heidt is interested in deploying people-focused development mechanisms in other post-conflict areas around the world. 

“I seek to support development initiatives, such as those in Cape Town, in conflicted and

post-conflict states,” said Heidt. “The Gates Cambridge Scholarship will allow me to gather a macro understanding of international development as well as build my technical skills.”

Personal Passion for Peacebuilding

“My passion for sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict settings stems from being raised in an intergenerational, Russian-American household,” said Heidt. “Witnessing the consequences of unredressed harm following conflict in the Soviet Union drove my desire to study government, justice, and peacebuilding.”

The legacies and after-effects of conflict have animated Heidt’s own life – her late father, a contractor at the Department of Defense, and her mother, a Russian woman, met after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The experiences of her mother and grandmother, who lived in the Soviet Union and later with Heidt’s family, and her own intergenerational trauma, have informed her own academic pursuits.

“My family’s trauma, stemming from their lives in the Soviet Union, shaped their lives—and it shaped mine, too,” she said. “Witnessing my entire family carry these burdens gave me an unshakeable desire to serve people affected by trauma.”

Heidt transferred from William & Mary, where she had been the class president, to Georgetown in 2022. Since arriving on the Hilltop, Heidt, a double major in government and justice and peace studies, has been active in a multitude of classroom and extracurricular settings, investigating questions of conflict resolution, international law and transformative justice. 

At Georgetown, Heidt has worked as a research assistant at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, where she created the first conflict tracking system in the world with a gendered focus and collected data on the female victims of armed conflict. In 2023, she was granted a fellowship to develop and publish research on gender, violence and transitional justice in Northern Ireland as a research fellow in the Global Irish Studies program.

In her free time, she served as the president of Georgetown University Prison Outreach, where she managed volunteer programs that connect students with incarcerated individuals and helped administer creative writing and GED classes for individuals in DC and Virginia detention facilities.

Heidt has been just as active in the wider world as she has been on the Hilltop. She completed a full-time internship with the Brookings Institution, supporting former U.S. Ambassador Norm Eisen through research and analysis of threats to American democracy, including the legal and political implications of Jan. 6. While there, she contributed to the article, “Detailed Chronology in Trump-Cohen Hush Money Investigation,” published in Just Security, which chronicles the indictment of former President Donald Trump. 

“Vicka is not merely an incisive, dedicated and capable legal and policy analyst; she is also a reliable, warm and collaborative person – one who is admired by her peers and her senior colleagues,” said Ambassador Eisen. “I am looking forward to seeing how Vicka uses her razor-sharp research and intellectual skills in her early career and beyond.”

Heidt also worked as the Eurasia Research Fellow at PEN America, where she collected data on imprisoned journalists in Russia and Crimea and aided investigations into the conflict in Ukraine. 

“Applying my classroom lessons in governance and justice and peace studies toward supporting real people is the crux of my education,” said Heidt. “The dire effects of neglecting trauma, predominantly felt in conflict responses, have pushed me to advocate trauma-informed lenses to development and peacebuilding.” 

Throughout it all, Heidt has served as a caregiver for her mother, who is in advanced stages of Multiple Sclerosis, her brother, who was recovering from an accident, and her grandmother.

“The fact that Vicka has accomplished so much, more in many cases, than her unencumbered peers, that she has faced the world which has dealt her so hard a hand with so much pluck, that she has risen to every occasion – becoming a caretaker, a survivor, and a champion for those in greatest need – makes her nothing less than a heroine in my eyes,” says Lauren Tuckley, director for the Center of Research and Fellowships.

Heidt one day hopes to be a lawyer and work on issues of transitional and restorative justice. 

“Researchers, policymakers, and lawyers work hand-in-hand to respond to international conflicts,” she said. “With a foundation in each of these fields, I will be best equipped to apply an empathetic, victim-centered lens to peacebuilding.” 

This summer, two Georgetown professors, JosĂŠ Casanova and Eli McCarthy, joined and helped organize a traveling to Kyiv on May 24-25th at the invitation of Mayor Vitali Klitschko to advocate for peace and pray for justice. Casanova is a recognized expert on the dynamics of religious pluralism in Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian fluently and served as translator and interpreter during the delegation’s meetings with Ukrainian authorities and religious groups. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, has survived bombardments during the invasion.  

Answering Material and Spiritual Needs

“Our purpose was to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine as well as to pray for a just peace,” explains McCarthy. “A deeper purpose was to create more space and humanizing energy to enhance the protection of civilians, reduce violence, increase humanitarian aid, accelerate an end to the war, and reinforce the ways of just peace.”

The international delegation boasted representatives from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions, with six members traveling from the United States. The delegates engaged in prayer, pastoral accompaniment and the distribution of humanitarian aid, alongside forging connections with local peacebuilders, religious leaders and politicians. 

“The war in Ukraine is not just a human tragedy, but a reminder of our communal failure to focus on breaking the dynamics of violence and dehumanization,” says McCarthy. “I hope this delegation encourages a wave of subsequent delegations, increases in humanitarian aid and peacebuilding, consistent humanitarian corridors, the flow of grain from the ports, a focus on dialogue and diplomacy and creative responses to strengthen the human community to persist in trying to save lives and end the killing in Ukraine.”

After this May 24-25 interfaith delegation, a participant from the UK was able to facilitate care for 1,000 Ukrainian youth to the UK. In June, a peace caravan, organized by some of the other delegates, sent 50 Italians to Odessa, where they worked to provide for the spiritual and material needs of the Ukrainian people. Some of these leaders are now staying with Ukrainians in Mykolaiv during the ongoing bombing. On July 11, a 150-person peace march occurred in Kyiv. One of the key advocacy calls of the interfaith delegation in May was to significantly increase humanitarian aid, which the European Union did on June 9. Another key advocacy call was to unblock ports so grain can flow, which has now progressed with the July 22 negotiated agreement.

As part of their professorial duties, both Casanova and McCarthy teach students not to accept the world as it is, but to imagine how it could be. McCarthy, a professor in the , teaches courses on Christian ethics, just peace advocacy, and nonviolent communication. He serves on the steering committee of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and his most recent book, A Just Peace Ethic Primer: Building Sustainable Peace and Breaking Cycles of Violence, pushes readers to manifest the struggle for just peace as a transformative praxis to engage conflict constructively. 

Casanova, one of the world’s leading scholars in the sociology of religion, is a Senior Fellow at the and a Professor Emeritus at Georgetown ˝Ű×ÓĘÓĆľ and Sciences. His landmark work, Public Religions in the Modern World, is considered a modern classic. During the visit to Kyiv, he also met with leaders of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the largest Christian denomination in Ukraine, which received the Tomos of autocephaly from Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 – reflecting a commitment to ecumenical collaboration in the service of peace and justice previously illustrated at an April 2022 Georgetown event on “

“The project is envisioned as a go-to source for country-level documentation and analysis of peace education efforts,” says Tony Jenkins, managing director of the  International Institute on Peace Education and professor in the Justice and Peace Studies Program.

A Program for Peace

“Mapping Peace Education” has its roots in a 2019  student project as part of the JUPS 407.01: Peace Education seminar taught by Jenkins. These students, who hailed from the College, the School of Foreign Service, and the Law and Graduate School,  were paired with peace education mentors from different countries with the intention of developing country profiles that would be shared with the global social movement Global Campaign for Peace Education. 

Many of the student drafts were incorporated into the final profiles of “Mapping Peace Education” which were further developed by country experts.  The project will eventually document peace education efforts in every country around the world, with 20-30 country profiles added annually.

Caelan Johnston (C’22), who supports Mapping Peace Education as  a youth researcher for the Global Campaign for Peace Education,  says that the initiative “provides a wide breadth of data on peace education efforts around the world for researchers, educators, organizers and anyone who is interested in peace education.” 

“The Mapping Peace Education project provides invaluable data to further deepen awareness of peace education efforts globally,” Johnston continues. 

As part of her work for the Global Campaign for Peace Education, Johnston has been focused on youth outreach. She and her fellow researchers plan to publish a report on the findings from a survey sent out earlier this year that gauged youth knowledge of and interest in peace education.

Country profiles provide an overview and analysis of circumstances of violence, conflict, and injustice; significant peace education efforts;  legislative initiatives supportive of peace education; country efforts in support the achievement of ; a directory of organizations pursuing peace education; and curation of peer-reviewed research.  

“Mapping Peace Education” is a global research effort supported by partner organizations specializing in peace education.  Partner organizations identify researchers from within their networks, assist with the maintenance and biennial review of existing profiles, and serve as advisors, researchers and contributors for annual reports. 

The project was launched in October of this year with a special virtual event featuring a dialogue between Tony Jenkins, JUPS Professor and Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Peace Education, and Cecilia Barbieri, Chief of the UNESCO Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education. Jenkins and Barbieri were joined by a panel of contributing researchers from around the world, including Loreta Castro (Philippines), Raj Kumar Dhungana (Nepal), Loizos Loukaidis (Cyprus), Tatjana Popovic (Serbia), and Ahmad Jawad Samsor (Afghanistan).

For more information about the project, please email the Global Campaign for Peace Education at map@peace-ed-campaign.org or visit .

Heather Yu Huang

A double major in Justice & Peace Studies and sociology, Yu Huang studies the intersection of cultural and educational inequities, which she hopes to apply to the legal industry and non-profit work post-graduation. 

“As a first-generation student from a low-income, single-parent household, I know firsthand that communities like mine are denied basic necessities, and I have developed a passion for helping students on their educational journeys,” Yu Huang says. “I plan to work towards enabling disadvantaged communities like my own through our education system, and I also want to elevate the issues surrounding other areas of our governmental system and find feasible solutions for these crises.”

On campus, Yu Huang is a member of both the Georgetown Scholars and Georgetown Community Scholars programs. She is also involved with cultural and religious affiliations, AASA, VSA and BuSA in addition to her work as an intern for Pierce Law Firm in Houston, on-campus work and a private tutoring position. Outside of school, Yu Huang mainly focuses on work in the field of law having worked at Pierce Law Firm, Johnson Law Group and other Houston-based firms.

Yu Huang spends the majority of her free time working or volunteering. She is an English tutor for the Houston-based organization Momentum Education and volunteers in DC middle schools with her CBL class. Yu Huang also serves as an advising fellow for the Matriculate Fellowship, a nonprofit that pairs high school students from underserved communities with college students in preparation for their college applications. 

The sophomore says that the Chester Gillis award will enable her to continue working with first-generation students around the country and help to create an official Matriculate Fellowship on campus. She hopes that the development of this fellowship will empower other Hoyas in giving back to students nationwide.  

After graduation, Yu Huang plans on working with Teach for America before attending law school. 

“Georgetown’s giving nature and my studies have pushed me to better recognize the many inequalities that surround us today, specifically in understanding how these inequalities are misinterpreted and mishandled in solution creation,” Yu Huang says. “I plan to continue on my path to fighting inequity in our education system both during my time on and off campus and I hope to leave a positive impact on the Hoya community and beyond.”

Jennifer MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez

Martínez Sánchez studies sociology and public health, but as an activist, she “views these disciplines through an intersectional lens—one that relates the issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and citizenship—inside and outside the classroom.”

“Immigrants’ rights are my passion, motivation, and empowerment, and so my goal at Georgetown has always been to fulfill my life mantra: #undocumented, #unafraid, and #heretostay,” she says. “I also strive to elevate the voices and concerns of my undocumented community. Now, I seek to combine these questions of status, health, and migration as I study how acculturation shapes attitudes towards mental health and treatment for documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants as part of my thesis research.”

The junior says that the university’s core values encourage her to seek justice everywhere, which is how she came to teach ESL and computer literacy skills to undocumented adults, prepare DACA and citizenship applications, create an UndocuAlly Training seminar and co-sponsor UndocuWeek earlier in her Georgetown career. 

But, MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez also hopes to carry forth these same values and stories beyond Georgetown, which is why she participated as a fellow at Harvard University’s Public Policy Leadership Conference and as a panelist for College Board’s PrepĂĄrate Conference. 

Today, MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez works with the medical school at the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion “to empower and uplift underrepresented voices in medicine.” 

In addition to her other roles, MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez is a member of the Georgetown Scholars Program and the Community Scholars Program, where she served as a peer mentor and teaching assistant. She also participated in Georgetown University’s Student Association and Hoyas for Immigrant Rights alongside her peer advisorship with the College Dean’s Office. 

Last summer, she completed an op-ed and capstone presentation on the effects of COVID-19 on undocumented essential workers at Georgetown’s medical school. She also completed problem-based learning cases, clinical simulations and a project proposal for UCLA’s medical school as she studied substance abuse and its relationship with food and housing insecurity. 

These experiences encouraged MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez to establish an UndocuHealth project, which aims to promote health awareness by creating a guideline for her community to access and navigate healthcare.  

MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez says that the Chester Gillis Award will allow her to focus on developing the UndocuHealth project further as she plans to collaborate with local community health centers and non-profit organizations to share and improve the project’s design and framework.   

“I would be able to give back to the community that raised me once more so that one day mi gente will receive basic health and social services without fear, judgment, prejudice, or retaliation.”

After graduating, MartĂ­nez SĂĄnchez hopes to earn an M.D./M.P.H. and open her own free clinic designed to support and provide for undocumented individuals and families.