After 26 years at ��ݮ���� in leadership positions with several programs, Dean Sue Cockley has touched hundreds of students, faculty and staff – from those in the adult degree completion program to graduate and seminary studies and more recently undergraduate faculty – and helped to shape and guide many of the institution’s core programs for adult learners.

Planning ahead, one might say, would be a strength for a leader like Cockley. But now, with her retirement date set for June 2022, she says “in a sudden turn of character, I have almost no plans!” The prospect feels “very daring,” she adds, to step out of the confining cycle of the academic timetable and role and into the unknown.

She’s looking forward to spending time with her husband, Dave, recently retired as a professor in health sciences at James Madison University; their two adult children, including daughter Kate Cockley Clark ‘07, professor of nursing at EMU; and grandchildren.  “And I’ll probably clean out some closets and organize family photos, but beyond that, it’ll be an adventure!”

It’s an “adventure” well-deserved. Cockley has held several transitional roles in which she had key responsibilities through a time of realignment and restructuring. In fall 2018, she began serving as the first dean of EMU’s School of Theology, Humanities and Performing Arts. From 2016 through spring 2018, she was successively an associate graduate dean, graduate dean, and graduate and seminary dean.

In a retirement tribute last month, longtime colleague Provost Fred Kniss expressed gratitude for Cockley’s expansive and generous spirit of leadership. “We are so grateful that, whenever EMU called you to new responsibility, you found a way to say ‘yes,’ and embraced the risks that come with change.”

Cockley says that she “never set out to be a dean.” Nevertheless, the last several years have been, “on the whole, very satisfying, especially in the challenges of problem solving with others and helping people grow in their own ways.”

In some ways Cockley’s trajectory reflects her own growth model as a student of organizational change, management, and empowering leadership. 

After designing community education programs with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Haiti and Kentucky in the 70s and 80s, Cockley flourished in her calling. She went on to hold a range of positions, including as a national trainer for Literacy Volunteers of America, Vista volunteer in adult education programs in West Virginia, adult education specialist in Virginia, and director of the Adult Educator’s Research Network. She also earned a master’s degree in adult education from Marshall University in West Virginia.

The MCC connection was what led her to EMU. “In the late 1970s, Dave and I did an MCC term and started a program in a village in the Central Plateau in Haiti. Ten years later, Chris Gingerich [former professor of business] and his wife Eileen were stationed nearby and closed the program. When we met Chris and Eileen at church, we got together to talk about Haiti over dinner and Chris mentioned that the Adult Degree Program was looking for a new director.”

She arrived at EMU in 1996 to direct the Adult Degree Completion Program and was tapped in 2012 to to develop and then direct the new MA in Organizational Leadership program. She further explored the role of education while earning a doctorate in the social foundations of education at University of Virginia. 

She counts those years with students in EMU’s ADCP program, which continues today as the Leadership and Organizational Management program, as thoroughly fulfilling. 

“One of the things I am most proud of in my work here is the time I spent with ADCP students,” she said. “I often see problems in the world and feel helpless to do anything about them. At a time when earning a bachelor’s degree was an important step toward earning a living wage, providing an accessible, high quality degree completion program for working adults was something real that EMU and I could do to help individuals.”

Graduates of the program, which started in Harrisonburg in 1993 and in Lancaster in 1997, number more than 1,100.

“Sue led ADCP to dramatic growth in both its size and its distinctive excellence and her impact on this region by way of ADCP’s many graduates now in the workforce is a legacy in which she can take great pride,” Kniss said.

From leading both the ADCP and MAOL programs, Cockley was asked to step into bigger roles. 

She was willing in part because of her colleagues — people who are committed to doing their best in sometimes difficult constraints of the institutional environment, she said. “Over the years I have become more and more impressed with folks at EMU, as I’ve gotten to know them better, to become aware of what is important to them and the challenges they face.”

Interacting with faculty dedicated to creating optimal environments for adult learners who brought their own tremendous strengths and experiences to the classroom created a rich immersive learning environment, she said. Now Cockley can reflect on those influences in her professional career as well as in her transition to retirement. “Working on developing the MA in organizational leadership caused me to really think about my own leadership strengths and weaknesses, and later, working with the seminary has underscored for me the importance of spiritual formation as an opportunity for real growth at a time in my life when formal education is over.”

And thank goodness, she adds!

___________

Sue was honored at an April reception with other EMU retirees; participation in news coverage is voluntary. Read other news articles about transitions for Dave King, Nancy Heisey, Jayne Docherty, and Dave Detrow. Share your good wishes and fond memories in the comment box below and we’ll make sure she sees them.

“You are the subject of your own research.” Listening to that inner voice sent Lisa Collins, EdD, on her own journey of autoethnography. Collins is co-teaching Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), Level 2, with Lead Trainer �����پ������Ѳ��Բ��ھ������, at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s

Two five-day SPI sessions remain, beginning June 6 and June 13, with courses in circle processes, restorative practices for sexual and domestic harms, building resilience for challenging systemic racism, and several other courses, including STAR I (June 6).

There is still time to apply to courses. Due to some cancellations from international participants who did not receive a visa, there is still a small amount of partial scholarship funding for individuals as well as organizational discounts available to organizations sending three or more people. To apply to SPI 2022, . (To start your SPI Application, you will need to create an EMU My Forms account)

An educational professional with over 25 years of experience, Lisa Collins holds degrees in psychology and education and works as an assistant professor at Lewis and Clark College and a business consultant in Portland, Oregon.

Learn more about Lisa Collins, her experiences in healing from racial trauma, and how her STAR training changed her healing path in a

James Ramsey ’18 dons safety glasses, a hairnet, and ear plugs to go out onto the production floor at the Artisan Packaging plant, known for many years as Graham Packaging, in Harrisonburg. Brightly-painted machines, pipes and conveyor belts tower overhead – whirring, chugging, and puffing: molding and screen printing more than 700 different plastic bottles that the factory ships all over the world for customers like Downy and Johnson & Johnson. 

Now the operations manager, Ramsey first started out as an entry-level technician 12 years ago, and worked his way through every production position en route to management. Along the way, he decided to hone his leadership skills through ��ݮ����’s Accelerated Degree Program.

Ramsey enrolled in the program in 2016, and earned his bachelor’s degree in leadership and organizational management two years later. As the featured speaker on that commencement stage, Ramsey commended his peers for demonstrating “proof that the biggest challenges have the greatest rewards.”

He’s now working towards his Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership at EMU.

“It’s just a place where you want to be,” Ramsey said, of his educational experience at EMU. “It makes you feel like you belong.”

Ramsey took a long and winding educational road to that first college diploma. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at Virginia Tech, then at Blue Ridge Community College, before deciding to travel around the U.S., working the vacation resort circuit. He then spent a few years in Malaysia, and when he came home, his brother was working at Graham, and helped him get hired on. 

After his body started to show the wear and tear of heavy lifting, Ramsey decided he needed to further advance his career. He finished his associate’s degree at Blue Ridge, and started shopping around for bachelor’s programs that fit the schedule of an adult working full time.

EMU “opened a lot of doors, professionally, for me. It gave me a lot of confidence to be a strong, effective leader.”

James Ramsey ’18

Recently, the factory celebrated one year free of safety incidents – before that, they went three years until a worker twisted her ankle, Ramsey said.

Ramsey leads safety meetings once a week, which he said would have intimidated him before his EMU coursework helped him improve at public speaking.

“I take a lot of pride in that. I’m always preaching safety,” Ramsey said. “Everybody takes pride in the work.”

Ramsey said that the camaraderie within his cohort was another boon of the program.

“All the professors were wonderful, too,” he added, “they are just so intelligent, and emotionally intelligent.”

That emotional intelligence, in addition to the nuts-and-bolts theory of leadership, has helped the introverted Ramsey become confident in his managerial role.

“We always make sure we take care of the people” at the plant, Ramsey said. “It has a family feel.” 

Another employee, Cindy Berry, confirmed this.

“That’s why we’ve all been here so long,” Berry said. She’s been at the plant for 33 years, and now works in the quality lab, ensuring that bottles come out in accordance with diagram specifications. She also praised Ramsey for having hands-on knowledge of every part of production.

“He’s been everywhere … that makes a good leader,” Berry said.

“It takes courage to try to address harms at the systemic level, such as the land theft that is at the foundation of the service; at the institutional level, like culture and climate issues faced by employees throughout the service; and the individual level, things like interpersonal bullying and harassment. None of our organizations is a shining example of doing this well, so it’s a gift to be part of the process of struggle toward change.”

STAR Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield

The National Park Service is focusing on improvement of its workplace culture and climate – and calling in the help of restorative justice and conflict transformation professionals from ��ݮ����’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program.

Most recently, STAR trainers conducted a training and facilitated discussion over four days in Philadelphia for 20 federal workers, including five park service superintendents. Its goal? To engage with trauma and resilience experts to help shift workplace culture and build employee satisfaction throughout park service offices in the Northeast.

The event was the second time STAR has worked with the park service and more trainings are being planned, according to STAR Program Director Hannah Kelley.

The inclusion of STAR programming has provided a way into addressing systemic issues within the park service’s unique context, said Rebecca Stanfield McCown, director of the host agency, the National Park Service . “I’m still amazed at the impact of the December workshop, which not only connected each of us to the personal and human side of trauma awareness and restorative practices, but helped us begin to develop a common language around these principles.” 

NPS explores the potential of RJ

The Stewardship Institute is dedicated to helping NPS leaders “move the organization in new directions” through collaboration and dialogue. It began exploring the potential of restorative justice for “employee wellness in the face of harassment and hostility” about two years ago, McCown said.  

At about the same time, Grand Canyon National Park hosted a STAR training. Park administrators were connected with STAR by Sigal Shoham, a 2013 alumna of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and an organizational omsbudsman with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution (CADR). 

Administrators at The Stewardship Institute were especially interested in the beneficial outcomes of the training in Arizona. “When we were looking to understand what role restorative practices could have in addressing harassment and hostility, we reached out to STAR because of the good things we had heard from the staff at Grand Canyon,” McCown said.

She added: “It had been challenging to communicate the potential alignment and benefits restorative practices could bring to the NPS because most of us lacked the language and strong understanding of how it might be applied to our workplaces.”

With STAR programming shaped to that educational goal and outside experts brought in for the facilitated discussion, the Philadelphia training helped the Stewardship Institute shine light on the way forward. 

Positive outcomes

The training was facilitated by STAR Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Jonathan Swartz, a restorative justice practitioner and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding alumnus. The participants, including Shoham and other CADR employees, spent 2.5 days learning about the personal and organizational impacts of trauma, concepts and applications of restorative justice, self care, and secondary traumatic stress. 

The remainder of the third and fourth days focused on a facilitated dialogue, during which participants could ask questions of experts in restorative justice, trauma awareness and resilience, truth and reconciliation, and organizational anthropology, including the STAR trainers themselves. EMU professors Johonna Turner and Carolyn Stauffer, who bring expertise in trauma awareness, resilience and restorative justice, contributed to this discussion, which also included cultural anthropologists and other specialists.

One outcome of the final session was strategies and action items to create awareness, implement practices, and build a new culture. 

“I could feel the combination of struggle and inspiration and care among the participants,” said Mansfield “It takes courage to try to address harms at the systemic level, such as the land theft that is at the foundation of the service; as well as at the institutional level, like culture and climate issues faced by employees throughout the service; and the individual level, things like interpersonal bullying and harassment. None of our organizations is a shining example of doing this well, so it’s a gift to be part of the process of struggle toward change.”

The December workshop, McCown said, equipped park service staff to begin “to implement trauma-aware and restorative practices in our individual parks or program culture,” such as developing workshops for more staff. The participants are also working to “identify ways that park leadership can foster workplaces that include restorative practices and trauma-aware leadership.”

Berg joined Pixo, which develops user-focused custom software and web applications, in 2015. He is the of the company, based in Urbana, Illinois.

We want everyone to be real when they’re here, both because it makes our work environment a lot of fun and because it makes the work we do for our clients the best it can be. Everyone brings not only their skills, but also their unique perspectives to the table, which leads to better ideas, better problem solving, and more empathy for each other and for our clients.

Jason Berg ’01, on

His Longacre Seminar was titled “Timing is Everything: When Waiting Makes Sense and When it Doesn’t in our Businesses, in our Communities, and for Ourselves.”

Berg also visited classes on management of information systems, quantitative decision making, introduction to business, organizational behavior and principles of management.

“He connected really well with our students and shared some interesting stories,” said Professor Leah Kratz, who teaches quantitative decision-making for business. “I appreciated how encouraging and receptive he was to the students’ questions.”

After an internship with a digital strategy company and graduating with a degree in business administration, Berg worked for nine years as a manager with Precision Graphics, which provides media services such as illustration, composition and design for the publishing industry. He then worked as an account executive and in marketing management with several tech companies before coming to Pixo.

Berg is also currently a board member of UC2B Community Benefit Fund, focused on improving digital inclusion and digital equity for individuals with low- to moderate-resources in the Champaign-Urbana area.

The Longacre Seminar Series is named after and endowed by Horace W. and Elizabeth G. Longacre, with the goal of supporting and inspiring worthy, aspiring entrepreneurs through the series and an endowed scholarship. 

In the new role, Good will coordinate off-campus cross-cultural undergraduate and graduate courses, provide academic and programmatic oversight of the undergraduate cross-cultural requirement, and teach undergraduate cross-cultural learning courses. 

“At EMU, equipping students with relevant, robust cross-cultural experiences is central to all of our programs, from undergraduate to graduate,” said Provost Fred Kniss. “Beth brings not just a wealth of personal intercultural and administrative experience to this new role, but also perspective as a parent whose own children were positively impacted by EMU’s cross-cultural requirements.”

The position is an expansion of the undergraduate-focused role previously held by Ann Graber Hershberger, who this year became Mennonite Central Committee’s interim associate director.

Cross-cultural study has been a part of the EMU core curriculum for over 30 years. Faculty have introduced undergraduate and graduate students to cultural learning through educational travel in more than 80 locations around the globe.

Intercultural qualifications

Good has lived or worked internationally in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda, North Korea, Ukraine and Vietnam, as well as with underserved populations in the United States. In addition to English, she speaks Maa (Maasai), Swahili and beginner French. 

She completed her doctoral studies in nursing science and research, with a focus on conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, where she also earned a master’s degree in public health nursing and certification as a clinical nurse specialist. She completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing at EMU after earning an associate degree in nursing from Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Area Community College.

A certified trainer of Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience, Good served as Mennonite Central Committee’s Kenya country representative with her husband Clair from 2018-19 and as the organization’s health coordinator 2012-18, having earned board certification in advanced practice public health nursing.

From 2005-12, she was clinical director at the Hope Within Community Health Center in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and from 2003-12 she was the HIV/AIDS education program coordinator for Eastern Mennonite Missions, which is based in Salunga, Pennsylvania. She was a staff nurse at the Penn State Milton S Hershey Medical Center 2003-05.

As a medical missions worker in Kenya from 1989-2001, she began a small rural health center, provided community health and wellness education and children’s educational programs, and educated and learned in women’s groups.

She has taught at EMU since 2012.

Grads in the family had four different crosscultural experiences

Good’s own cross-cultural perspectives have evolved over her years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1980s and in Kenya 1989-2001. Intercultural experiences, she said, allow people to learn skills and gain experiences that will help them communicate and navigate relationships with people from other cultures and who hold different beliefs and ideas.

When Good and her husband Clair first served overseas, in church construction and later church planting, it was with a sense of calling that she now describes as “the white savior thing.” Soon, however, she realized that the experience was more a “learning exchange.”

In Kenya, she had anticipated speaking out against the Maasai practice of female genital mutilation. But while she continues to believe it is wrong, she came to believe it was more important to address it through “a conversation with friends instead of from on a soap box,” she said. “That was a huge shift for me, from wanting to tell people what to do to ‘Hey, why don’t we talk about this and see where the conversation goes.’”

The Goods have four daughters, all of whom graduated from EMU having fulfilled the undergraduate cross-cultural requirement, but in different ways. Even though the family had lived internationally, their daughters’ college-age travel experiences were important, Good said: traveling apart from their parents developed new confidence to travel and engage interculturally. One daughter attended a Mennonite World Conference in Zimbabwe, another spent a semester in the Washington Community Scholars’ Center, another enrolled in a three-week summer trip to China, and the fourth spent a semester in Colombia.

“I think they were pleasantly surprised that there were some things that they recognized from their growing up, but also that there were still new things to learn,” Good said.

And, Good observed, her children’s experiences of living cross-culturally have allowed them to “think more deeply,” she said. “They think in a more broad worldview.”

Open to anyone interested in faith-based conflict transformation, the event includes plenary talks, practical workshops and opportunities for networking, and aims to:

• Respond to the hunger for reconciliation and peace in churches and communities.
• Develop and sustain the art of conflict transformation, reconciliation and peacebuilding.
• Share and develop knowledge and skills to support reconciliation work.
• Strengthen the unique contribution made to conflict transformation by churches and faith communities.
• Uncover the peace-making skills you already have.

David Brubaker, dean of ��ݮ����’s School of Social Sciences and Professions and associate professor of organisational studies at the university’s , will deliver the keynote address the topic of “waiting.”

“I’ve been privileged to accompany the development of Place for Hope since the founding conference in Aviemore in 2009,” he said in a press release. “The growth in programs offered, people served, and communities impacted has been extraordinary. I’m eager to glimpse what the next decade holds.”

Victoria Mason, part of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Reconciliation Team, will be leading one of the workshops. “Knowing how to transform conflict is crucial for following Jesus in a world that is ever more complex and divided. Ilook forward to being inspired to embrace that challenge with energy, wisdom and love”, she said.

Other key note speakers will include:

• Sarah Hills, Vicar of Holy Island, Honorary Canon for Reconciliation at Inverness Cathedral, and Canon Emeritus of Coventry Cathedral.
• Brendan McAllister, Corrymeela Member, Senior Mediation Advisor with the UN and a Senior Associate of ‘mediatEUr’.
• Ruth Harvey, Director of Place for Hope, a leading Mediation and Conflict Transformation provider amongst church communities in Scotland and beyond.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Place for Hope, a Scottish charity launched in 2009 in response to the need for mediators within faith groups and congregations in Scotland.

Now, a decade on, Place for Hope supports the work of 35 trained and accredited mediators. They work throughout Scotland and the north of England offering coaching, facilitating difficult conversations and training. The aim is to nurture peace and build reconciliation in all church denominations.

The gathering is being hosted in partnership with the , , , , ,  , , ,  and the .

Todd Campbell MBA ‘19 is now senior packaging and ingredients purchasing manager at Bowman Andros in Mount Jackson, Virginia. 

Sandra Quigg MAOL ‘19 was named the new executive director of The Boys and Girls Club of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. 

Immediate payback on his investment

Campbell says his studies in the MBA program at EMU accelerated his career advancement, helping to prepare him to provide beneficial input on business decisions, as well as to apply project management and leadership theory.

Bowman Andros is a French-owned food manufacturing company with 30 factories around the world. The Mount Jackson facility specializes in the processing of applesauce in small cups, pouches and jars.

In his new management role, Campbell has two direct reports. He handles sourcing, price and contract negotiation. He also facilitates packaging development and vendor management of all primary packaging (packaging that touches the product), as well as secondary ingredients.

“This is anything not a whole fruit or puree such as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, ascorbic acid, flours and flavors,” he said.  

He began the program while in his first position at Bowman Andros as a sales forecast analyst, seeing the degree as the best investment and the optimal way to learn more about accounting, finance and economics — “hard skills that make the MBA graduate effective in the business world.”

While in the MBA program, Campbell was promoted three times within the company: from procurement coordinator, streamlining material requirements planning, managing raw material inventories and facilitating timely delivery of ingredients for production scheduling, to the purchasing team, and then a supervisory role within the purchasing team.  

“I chose EMU’s MA in Organizational Leadership program because of its unique emphasis on business with purpose. I came out of it understanding how to lead that purposeful business with your true self … that combination has had a huge positive impact on me personally and professionally.”

Prepared to lead a large organization

Quigg has worked for more than 20 years with nonprofit organizations, in a range of fields including higher education, arts administration and social services. Her interest in the Boys and Girls Club executive director’s position was driven in part by a desire to work with youth. 

Her prior work has been with adults: most recently, as director of organizational sustainability at Friendship Industries, a nonprofit packaging company in Harrisonburg that employs people with disabilities and other barriers to employment. She had previously served the same organization as director of development for seven years, and also in positions with the Arts Council of the Valley and in the James Madison Corporate and Foundation Relations.

Quigg was drawn to the values of the organization. “The values that the Boys and Girls Club espouse are things that I absolutely believe in,” she said. “I CARE stands for integrity, collaboration, accountability, respect and excellence. The organization shares those values with youth and the broader community. I have a great opportunity to help them do that.”

BGCHR serves 1,000 children in the valley annually at seven sites, three in Rockingham County and four in Harrisonburg. Its main office is in the Lucy F. Simms Continuing Education Center in Harrisonburg.

Quigg completed her final class, which included a 10-day exploration of sustainable organizations and community entrepreneurship in rural Appalachia, in between her second and third weeks in her new position.

The MAOL degree has given her new understandings about the many organizations she had worked in, and new vocabularies and theories that both supported and challenged her perspectives.

“I sought out more education because I felt like I was doing things innately and intuitively and I wanted validation and verification, but I also wanted to know that if I wasn’t doing the right thing, how to do it better, how to solve the problem. To suddenly have a word or phrase to describe an experience or an interaction, or to see how what I was doing was linked to a theory, that was huge. I still get goosebumps just talking about it.”

Quigg recalls several instances when she was able to apply a concept or skill she’s learned in class “the very next day at work.” 

EMU’s organizational leadership curriculum is unique in that it requires “exploration of who you are, which leads to self-awareness and self-knowledge, which has for me led to more self-confidence,” Quigg said.

Though she wasn’t aware of that curricular emphasis before she enrolled, that related growth in her leadership capability has been just as important as her deeper understanding of organizational behavior, culture and development. “I chose EMU’s MA in Organizational Leadership program because of its unique emphasis on business with purpose. I came out of it understanding how to lead that purposeful business with your true self. I am happy to say that combination has had a huge positive impact on me personally and professionally.”

Quigg was selected from approximately 57 applicants for the position, according to an article in the Daily News-Record.

He will also be EMU’s representative in the program, an innovative online degree program offered jointly by EMU, Bluffton University, Canadian Mennonite University and Goshen College. 

Miller succeeds Dr. David Brubaker, who has been named to a leadership position within the university’s new three-school academic structure. Brubaker will be dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professions. [Read more about the three school structure.]

“Andrew views our programs in the context of a changing environment, and is thus able to propose adaptive changes that bring greater relevance while retaining our core values,” said Brubaker. “He has that rare ability to see the whole system while not losing track of the details.”

Miller has been a faculty member and administrator at EMU since 2012. He has taught in the department of business and leadership, as well as in graduate programs, and directed the cross-cultural program. He is currently pursuing a PhD in strategic leadership studies at James Madison University.

“I’ve enjoyed mentoring undergraduate students as they explore who they are in becoming leaders in their work and community, and I’m looking forward to supporting EMU’s graduate students as they study in our programs with a focus on becoming better leaders and individuals who positively influence their community. with a similar strong emphasis on leadership development,” Miller said.

Since beginning in 1999, EMU’s MBA program has graduated 133 from diverse professional fields. Courses meet in the evening in a hybrid format and focus on management skills, leadership and stewardship strategies within the common good framework. The curriculum includes a unique Costa Rica-based capstone course.

The MAOL began in 2014 to meet the needs of mid-career professionals seeking to enhance their leadership skills and organizational understanding. Nearly 30 graduates work in a variety of fields, from education and business to healthcare and with nonprofits.

In addition to teaching experience and a professional resume that includes working with various organizations, Miller has also been involved in curriculum development and reorganization at EMU.

He holds an MS in agricultural economics at Iowa State University and a Master of Divinity degree from Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in international agriculture and economics from EMU, Miller worked for Mennonite Central Committee as agricultural program coordinator in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia, for two years. Later as MCC southeast Asia co-representative, he supervised the Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam country programs as well as advised local partner organizations. 

“Family business is complex,” said Sally Landis Derstine ’82, “because there is an overlap of three different systems: family, business and ownership.”

The managing partner and a senior advisor at the in Telford, Pennsylvania, Derstine grew up in a family with a business, and so has first-hand experience of the accompanying “blessings and burdens.”

While family businesses are “the backbone of our economy” – a widely-quoted statistic is that they make up 90 percent of US enterprises – most don’t make it to or survive second-generation ownership.

“That’s not because families are defective,” Derstine said. “It’s because they don’t understand the complexity and how to manage it.”

She’s developed a unique model that depicts the teams and structures – family, shareholder, board, advisor and management – that families in business together must develop and foster to have healthy relationships and sustainability. Multi-generational business leadership and ownership is decidedly more mountain-climbing marathon than sprint, she said.

“This work requires leaning into awkward, crucial conversations and lots of naming reality or ‘telling the truth in love,’” she said. “I enjoy guiding business families to ‘make peace’ and create the futures they want instead of ‘keeping the peace,’ or avoiding delicate discussions.”

Derstine joined the center in 1992 and became its managing partner in 2014. Founded by Henry Landes in 1988, they have served hundreds of families, in part through a Family Business Learning Community that Derstine helped launch in her first year.

“I feel a deep sense of gratitude and delight when our clients find their voice, gain clarity, make wise choices and are reconciled to themselves, their family, to God,” she said. “Every day confirms that my work is marketplace ministry.”

As a student at EMU, Derstine “deeply appreciated” communication and business classes with Loren Johns, psychology classes with Galen Lehman ’73, and playing field hockey for Sandy Brownscombe. (The team was the first in EMU history to qualify for a national tournament, and was inducted into the Hall of Honor in 2012.)

But her career training, she said, began in the cradle.

“I am grateful to my parents, siblings and extended family for teaching me about what’s really important in life, what it means to live compassionately and simply, love deeply, forgive and extend grace,” she said.

She and her husband Douglas Derstine ’82, who completed 36 years as a middle and high school teacher, delight in their growing family, which includes three children and a granddaughter. Derstine’s generational impact, though, also includes the families she helps through her work to “find their voice and make wise choices.”

And that, she said, is “a sacred privilege.”

“I’m both grateful for the time and resources these professionals, many of them alumni, are offering our students,” said program director David Brubaker. “And since this is the first time I have joined them, I’m also learning from them myself.”

The MAOL program, designed for working mid-career professions, provides skills and training in conflict transformation, decision-making and strategic planning, individual and team leadership, financial management and mentoring.

In the mentorship course, mentors and mentees use readings, DiSC and Enneagram activities to explore personality traits, and discuss concepts of leadership through personal stories and reflection on topics such as self-management, authenticity, experience, emotional response, and life balance. Additionally, the student participates in a 360-degree review to assess personal leadership strengths and areas for improvement through a confidential survey of supervisors, co-workers and those s/he supervises. Over both semesters, the course involves combined classroom sessions and several one-on-one meetings.

This fall, Lee Snyder, president emeritus of Bluffton University, is the lead instructor. A recent guest speaker was attorney and alternate dispute resolution expert Marshall Yoder MA ’10 (conflict transformation). This year’s mentors, each paired with an MAOL student for a one-credit course each semester, include Brubaker and the following (all are Harrisonburg-based unless otherwise noted):

• ������������Devon Anders ’88, president of InterChange, Inc., offering warehousing, logistics and supply chain management;
• ������������Hans Harman ’02, president of Momentum Earthworks;
• ������������Jim Krause, retired corporate vice-president, president and CEO of Sentara RMH, a hospital serving seven counties in the Shenandoah Valley;
• ������������Kara Martin, probation officer in the Greensboro-based Middle District of North Carolina;
• ������������Edgar Miller, retired general manager of Truck Enterprises, a multi-state commercial truck dealership;
• ������������Tammy Torres, assistant director at the nonprofit social services agency Empowerhouse, in Fredericksburg, Va.
• ������������Wayne Witmer ’88, president of Harman Construction.

Anders and Miller served on the MAOL curriculum advisory council with Sue Cockley, a specialist in adult education who was the program’s first director. Now dean of EMU’s graduate school and Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Cockley notes that leadership development has strong similarities to spiritual formation, widely recognized as one of the seminary’s unique curricular foci.

“Becoming a leader is a maturation process that resembles spiritual maturation,’” she said. “This process is the gradual development of emotional intelligence, a deepening understanding of oneself and one’s strengths and weaknesses. Just as a spiritual director can help guide the student to a deeper faith, so can a mentor guide students in this self-knowing journey in order to form them into mature leaders.”

The pairings come about organically. Marilda Bardhi, former CFO of a large construction company in her native Albania, is currently interning with Anders at Interchange. Anders and Bardhi have spent time thinking and talking about cultural differences related to leadership. Albanian business professionals manage rather than lead, Bardhi said, so her big takeaway is related to working with employees and building “a good relationship as a leader with your colleagues, subordinates and frontline staff or stakeholders.”

Steve Ericksen, director of customer service at Campwise Software, has benefited from Edgar Miller’s mentorship prior to the class. That long-term relationship, “which I can’t imagine being without,” has helped Ericksen see his own leadership development as a perpetual process of authentic transformation. “It’s important to determine who you genuinely are and never stop learning about yourself and others,” he said, adding that Miller has served “as a sounding board for ideas, a motivator for continued growth, and a source of encouragement when difficult situations arise.”

Such intellectual and personal reflections are beneficial to him, Anders says. “I learn more about myself as I reflect and share my thoughts. We have had good conversations that have helped me to further understand different leadership styles and personalities, as well as cultural differences.”

Continued learning is key to Miller’s involvement. He’s mentored four students through the program, “and learned from all of them.” After more than 40 years in leadership, he enjoys passing on lessons learned and working with his mentees through current issues in their lives by offering “possible solutions or alternatives based on my experiences.” And the discussions sometimes revive forgotten principles of leadership or lead to the exploration of new ones.

“Good leaders never stop learning,” he said – echoing one underlying goal of the mentoring course: that the cycle of sharing and reflecting continue to enrich a lifetime of growth in all who participate.

For the past four years, graduate students in ��ݮ����’s residential MBA program and its affiliate program, the , have done just that during an eight-day international residency course.

Professor Jim Leaman created the course specifically for the Collaborative MBA program, a joint program of EMU, Bluffton University, Canadian Mennonite University and Goshen College. The online program features three residencies at the , middle and end of the two-year program.

“The Costa Rica residency happens in the middle of that curriculum, which helps to connect students who have met just once before and have then been working together online,” Leaman said.

EMU’s residential MBA curriculum also requires cross-cultural immersion; students have the option of choosing the Costa Rica course or a similarly themed 8-day course in Appalachia.

Students regularly say that the immersive cross-cultural experience — shared with classmates bringing leadership experience from a variety of fields — is among the pivotal, transformative points of their educational journey.

“Many of our students reflect that learnings and reflections from the one-week residency continue to reverberate months and years later,” said Leaman, a professor of business who created the residency course. “Getting out of that embeddedness in one’s own business culture and viewing it through the lens of another helps to focus attention and reflection on how we might better serve the common good through the decisions we make and the interactions we have.”

Learn more about the online  and EMU’s MBA program here.

Learning from other professionals

Based in Atenas not far from the capital city of San Jose, students participate in a busy itinerary, packed with site visits to a variety of businesses, including health care providers, eco-tourism sites, and agricultural cooperatives; Q & A sessions with owners, employees and community leaders; and opportunities to interact with the culture and customs of Costa Rica.

Students bring various perspectives and interests to their experience, which broadens the learning for all involved. For example, Petra Mbugua is a Slovakian native who supervises housekeeping services for a major resort in Virginia. She was attentive to the recycling, energy and water conservation practices in Costa Rica’s hospitality industry, which brings in $3.8 billion annually.

“We allocate significant time for employee customer service development,” she said, “but not enough on educating employees on improving environmental sustainability practices, and we also need to think about how to extend the message about sustainable practices to our guests as well.”

Marcus Ebright Zehr, a nurse anesthetist and health care administrator from Goshen, Indiana, found himself comparing not only the health care provider systems of the two countries, but the values he witnessed.

“Costa Ricans seems to care a lot more for things that really matter,” he reflected in an audio diary. “Every presenter and place we visited seemed to hold caring in common: caring for their parishioners, their laborers, their farmers, their neighbors, their families, their schools, their elderly, their dying, their food, their land, their water, their trees, their planet, their visitors.”

Witnessing such high levels of emotional and societal commitment, Ebright Zehr reflected that in the American society, “there is not enough care beyond ourselves. There is no doubt which values are more sustainable for our world — us, growing and improving together versus the value of me, striving and taking as much as I can.”

What does it mean to be a global citizen?

Eliciting personal reflection about global citizenship – on values, decisions, cultural norms, and the shape and substance of American capitalism — is one goal of the course, titled “Sustainable Organizations for the Common Good.”

“Our aim is to be there and dig down into the values that are part of the culture that inform decisions made at the personal, commercial and policy levels,” said Leaman. “That idea of global citizenship and the common good is at the heart of this course and the program, that whatever I do and whatever I am has implications on people around the world. We want our business leaders to think about how they make decisions and take actions with full knowledge of those consequences. How do they do business and lead in the business world in a way that aligns with their faith, goals, mission and purpose in life?”

One of Ben Bontrager’s radical takeaways from the residency – he had several – was philosophical. The CFO of Goshen Health in Goshen, Indiana, Bontrager is very invested into helping move his organization towards sustainability goals.

Listening to farmers, parents, politicians and business owners – Costa Rican residents each impacted in their daily lives by climate change – helped him to realize that sustainability was not an achievement or an accomplishment nor was it going to be without conflict.

“Where before I felt paralyzed by the insurmountable size of the problem, today I feel clear about the response: the change starts with me,” he said. “It continues with my next choices and grows with my conversations with others.”

More reflection occurred after sharing a meal with a family from a nearby barrio, which helped him to see how relationships are at the core of making progress together. After initial awkwardness subsided and similarities emerged through hesitant conversation and shared humor, “we found common ground in our humanity,” he said.

His takeaway: As Bontrager works alongside others toward building sustainability awareness, he recognizes the value of focusing more on common values instead of letting differences get in the way.