Alumni – Where Are They Now?

Zipline catches up with alumni who are young adults, National Leadership Council graduates or new National Alumni Board members.

Focus on Young Adults

Tina Bark
Tina started going to camp in 1988 and continued to go every summer until 1996, first in horsemanship at Sky Valley and then moving to mosaics and rafting at Round-Up. She also attended Christmas Camp and Family Camp! Tina came back in 1999 as a counselor in the rafting program, and returned various other years to work wherever needed. Spending time at A/U was the absolute best thing that ever happened to Tina growing up, she says. After her last summer as a camper, Tina lived in Argentina for a year as an exchange student, and she has not stopped traveling since. After graduating from university in Paris, France, she took a backpack and bought a round-the-world ticket, traveling to countries such as Mozambique, India and Australia, to name a few. After that trip, Tina continued to travel and study art of local cultures, stopping to do odd jobs along the way. She has now been to 42 countries and has lived in seven! Tina just moved back to Arizona permanently (for now) with her husband, Sebastian, who comes from a small village in France. They are both having fun acclimating to life in the beautiful desert of the Southwest, where Tina runs her own jewelry design business (www.TinaBarkDesigns.com).

Mary (Warrington) Loudermilk
Mary was a camper 2001-2004, mostly in mountain biking and mountaineering programs. She then served on staff in 2005 and 2007-2010 as a ranch hand, and then as Assistant Camp Director at Round-Up Ranch. She’s also worked during Christmas Camp at the Ranches. After living for a few years in Bozeman, Montana, Mary is currently traveling for a year in Southeast Asia with her husband, Derek. She is a full-time food blogger (at The Kitchen Paper), so she works while they travel. After being in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for a few months, Mary and Derek are settling in Bali, Indonesia, for the remainder of their year abroad.

Focus on DiscoveryBound National Leadership Council (NLC)

Annika Fredrikson
A graduate of the 2012 NLC class, Annika is currently a junior at Principia College and has the opportunity to apply the leadership skills she learned in NLC on a daily basis. This year at the college, she is the founder and director of a new conference, the International Perspectives Conference, which will bring speakers from across the world to speak on the effects of globalization on world cultures. This is her second year serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the college’s newsmagazine, The Pilot. She also serves as the all-campus treasurer for student clubs and as a teaching assistant in the math and computer science departments. Her daily life is full of opportunities to express servant leadership, to inspire and motivate others, and most of all to express God in all of His goodness—exactly the type of skills she learned during her years in NLC.

Emily Hunt
For Emily, a 2010 NLC alumna, NLC changed her life because she met a dozen amazing Christian Scientists dealing with the same challenges she was! Also, it encouraged her to grow in her understanding of Christian Science and paired her with a truly amazing mentor, with whom she still keeps in touch. She is finishing up her final semester at James Madison University with a double major in mathematics and Spanish. After graduation, she plans to take a trip to Europe to see friends and also plans to hike the Appalachian Trail. After that, she’s not sure what she will be doing, but hopes to travel and share her love of math for the rest of her life!

Emily Mattson
Emily is a recent graduate of Principia College and a 2010 graduate from the NLC. She earned a degree in sociology and anthropology with minors in religion and women and gender studies. She is currently the Program Manager for the Euphrates Institute, a non-profit organization based on the Principia College campus, and is also working at Peace Haven, a Christian Science nursing facility in St. Louis. She, along with four other alumni, are working to start up and maintain a strong NLC alumni community, as she sees the importance of preserving the skills, relationships and the passion for service that were developed in the NLC four-year program. For Emily, the NLC program is at the foundation of her everyday life, surfacing in her decisions, activities and roles she takes on. The leadership positions she has had in the past five years were based in the confidence that she gained through the NLC curriculum and the connections, both within her class and beyond.

Emily Osborne
Christian Science and servant leadership have remained close to Emily’s heart since she graduated from NLC in 2010. To her, leadership is about living the two commandments that Christ Jesus gave us—to love God and to love your neighbor—which is something she strives to do more and more each day. Emily continues to enjoy volunteering and has had many opportunities to put her public speaking skills into practice. She also enjoys staying connected with her NLC classmates, who are some of her best friends. Emily recently graduated from Principia College, where she majored in global perspectives and ran on the cross-country and track teams. She is currently in Bordeaux, France, where she teaches English in a public high school and is learning more about the French language and culture. She looks forward to the adventures and growth that the coming year will bring.

Eric Pagett
Eric is a graduate of the first NLC class (2009). NLC taught him to love serving mankind unselfishly, and he’s so grateful for each opportunity that has come his way to serve others. It is in these moments that he feels that he has learned the most about himself, our world and, most importantly, God. He could not be more grateful for what has unfolded in his life as the primary opportunity to serve—the full-time Christian Science practice. Everything he does stems from this journey of earnestly striving to better understand God and bring comfort to mankind through an awareness of God’s goodness. There’s no doubt that the NLC experience was a stepping stone that led to this life purpose.

Catherine Smith
For Catherine, a graduate of the 2011 class, NLC has kept her grounded in her beliefs on Christian Science. It prepared her to enter the post-NLC world as a leader, to think through her decisions and to keep striving to understand God and other people better. It has given her a great friend base, who she frequently calls on to learn more about life, Christian Science and prayer. Catherine is a senior at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she studies human resources, sociology and information science. She is the historian for a co-ed business fraternity and also the Christian Science Organization (CSO) Representative for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Kynan Witters-Hicks
Kynan, an alumnus of the 2010 NLC class, recently graduated from Principia College with a degree in global perspectives and minors in sustainability and Spanish language. He is currently living in Golden, Colorado, and working as a Sustainability Strategy and Marketing Associate for a sustainability and social media consultancy in Golden. He is really enjoying post-college life and spends his free time mountain biking, running, swimming, cooking and hanging out with friends. Kynan is very grateful for his NLC experience, particularly because it made him start to think about his role as a Christian Scientist and servant leader in his community and in the world. His passion for nature and global affairs gives him many opportunities to pray. He also says that NLC helped him to make Christian Science his own. Currently, he is active in his church community and loves supporting local Christian Science events.

New members of the National Alumni Board

Lara Shisler
Lara first attended Adventure Unlimited at the age of 11, thanks to a birthday present from her grandmother. She was hooked and spent every subsequent summer attending camp through high school. During her college and graduate school years, she worked on staff. More recently, Lara has attended Family Camp and has volunteered as a bunkhouse parent. She enjoys watching the next generation through her nieces and nephews being blessed by their attendance at youth camp, as she was. Lara currently lives in Leesburg, Virginia, working as a system engineer for a small consulting company, Mosaic ATM. She has spent the last 20 years working in the area of aviation, researching and developing new air traffic control software systems for the FAA and NASA. Lara is a member of the local Christian Science branch church in Leesburg, serving as the Reading Room Librarian and teaching in the Sunday School.

Sabrina Teel
Sabrina attended Round-Up Ranch as a young camper, along with a snowbound Christmas Camp. She returned in her teens as a camper and later attended the first A/U women’s Bible study group. Sabrina’s father, Peter Teel, worked in the 1960s as A/U’s graphic designer alongside Cap Andrews in St. Louis. Her son, Matthew, was a young teen camper at Sky Valley Ranch. Sabrina now lives in Southern California, where she is currently the Assistant Administrator for The Willows Foundation, an active independent community for adult Christian Scientists. Sabrina is looking forward to the privilege of serving on the National Alumni Board.

Diane Witters
Diane was an A/U camper in the 1970s, but her most meaningful link with A/U-DB has been witnessing the enriching impact of her sons’ experiences. Both Kynan (see profile on Kynan Witters-Hicks, above) and Shane have been campers, counselors and program heads at the A/U Ranches, and their four years with the National Leadership Council opened up tremendous opportunities for spiritual growth, service and character unfoldment for the whole family. Professionally, she wears different hats as she supports graduate students at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. She teaches technical writing and professional skills, coaches students for conference presentations, mentors a group of women scientists and engineers, consults for a consortium in the Department of Geophysics and designs online resources and discussions, where students dialog with each other about ethics. She feels most at home in wild landscapes and loves to head for the mountains and canyons with her husband, John, and their boys to backpack, canoe, run, cross-country ski and mountain bike. After years of coaxing little guys up long trails, now Diane and John can barely keep up with them, but they’re oh-so-grateful that their sons relish exploring wild, beautiful spaces as much as they do.

Chris “Yuma” Young
Yuma is a professor of philosophy at Principia College, where he has been teaching for 10 years. He has been involved in revamping the general education program and creating an outcome-based assessment of student learning at the college. He is also deeply involved in Principia’s study abroad program and is preparing to lead his second trip to India and Nepal this spring. Yuma started coming to the Ranches as a family camper in 1979 and continued through the 1980s. His first year on staff was in 1991 as a ranch hand. He has worked in almost every mountaineering program at A/U and was an Assistant Camp Director at Sky Valley for three summers and Round-Up for one summer. The Ranches have been an important part of his life for more than 30 years.