Daara Jalili ’17, ’19 M.Ed.

Firefighter, Marin County Fire Department

MAJOR: NEUROSCIENCE AND BEHAVIOR | MASTER OF EDUCATION: ALLIANCE FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION

From teaching to firefighting to spending time with friends, Daara Jalili’s capacity to care for others makes him a true servant-leader. Whether it is in his high school classroom or on the fireground, Jalili approaches his chosen vocations with integrity and humility. 

After earning his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame in 2017, Jalili taught high school math and science at Cantwell Sacred Heart of Mary High School through Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education program. He was blessed with a loving and caring school community that helped him make his classroom a place of learning, listening, and love. To this day, he keeps in touch with many of his students, serving as a listening ear and mentor when called upon. 

After his time in Southern California, Jalili returned to his home of Northern California in 2019. While teaching at Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, Jalili witnessed firsthand the effects of California’s devastating wildfires. Compelled to act, he began serving as a volunteer firefighter in Sonoma County, which he continues to do today. As the COVID-19 pandemic surged throughout the Bay Area in 2020, Jalili was drawn further toward the fire service’s ideal of service through action. His love of the natural places and people of his home state inspired him to pursue a career as a firefighter. 

As a member of a 20-member fire crew, Jalili currently works locally and statewide to assist in suppressing wildland fire. Fueled by the love of his work, Jalili and his crewmates contribute to local fuel management projects and other fire prevention activities when they are off-duty. Regardless of the nature of the call or assignment, Jalili seeks to live out his values of preparedness, integrity, service, and respect. Despite his rigorous and demanding lifestyle, he invests time and energy into keeping in touch with Notre Dame friends and professors.

Ana Kent, Ph.D. ’13

Senior Researcher, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

MAJOR: PSYCHOLOGY | MINOR: EUROPEAN STUDIES

Ana Kent’s talent for numbers led her into research — but not in the areas one might assume. A psychology major at Notre Dame, she sought to better understand human conflict while pursuing her doctorate at Saint Louis University. There, she studied prejudice and discrimination, creating Downward Classism Theory to help researchers and practitioners understand the harms of class-based prejudice and the potential remedies to dissolve it. 

Seeking to apply her degree towards real-world problems, Kent accepted a job at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis upon earning her Ph.D. As a senior researcher for the bank’s Institute for Economic Equity, her research offers insight into demographic wealth disparities and promotes the economic resilience and upward mobility of low- to moderate-income and underserved individuals and communities. She overcame research challenges to innovate and utilize a groundbreaking methodology that included researching married couples, making her one of the first to holistically document the gender wealth gap in the nation. 

Kent distills her published research into blog posts for the general public, establishing herself as a leading national expert on wealth inequality along racial, ethnic, educational, generational, and gender lines and reaching up to 150,000 readers per post. She has presented her work at universities, organizations, businesses, and think tanks across the country and lends her expertise on several research advisory committees and non-profit boards. Her papers and blogs have led to hundreds of media interviews and citations, including features in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and more. 

Despite this publicity, Kent wants to go beyond documenting disparities; she hopes to explore where the opportunities for economic equity lie. Currently, she is spearheading a new project to explore local wealth conditions in the St. Louis area, which would be the first of its kind.

Meehan Lenzen ’11

Senior Operations Manager, GE Aviation

MAJOR: ENVIRONMENTAL GEOSCIENCES

Meehan Lenzen ’11 has given back time, talent, and heart to the South Bend community, shaping the future of women in STEM. Lenzen, who graduated with a degree in environmental geosciences, is driven to introduce girls to STEM activities at a younger age to increase the number of women pursuing their own college degree in these fields. Lenzen directs GE Girls at Notre Dame STEM Camp — an annual free summer day camp for middle school girls in the South Bend Community School Corporation (SBCSC) — heading into its 10th year next summer. The camp, held on campus in Stinson-Remick Hall of Engineering, aims to expose students to real-life STEM concepts, challenges, and career role models through a week of hands-on activities developed and facilitated by GE women working in STEM, in collaboration with professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and Society of Women Engineers advisor, Dr. Victoria Goodrich.  

Lenzen, now a Senior Operations Manager at GE Aviation, possesses a tireless passion towards this aim; she even modified the camp to a virtual format during the pandemic and dedicated countless hours to ensure that the quality of exposure and care matched the original, in-person camp. Lenzen partners with GE, Notre Dame, and SBCSC to make certain that the students attend the camp for free, including busing the students to Notre Dame’s campus and providing meals while at camp. 

The camp, which has more than 25 workshops covering everything from aerospace engineering to chemistry to designing a prosthetic leg, exposes girls to a variety of STEM topics. Yet, Lenzen’s goals for the camp extend beyond acquiring content knowledge — she also incorporates values-based lessons and leadership opportunities through junior counselor roles for camp alumni focused on building confidence, promoting gender inclusivity, and caring for the community. Each day at camp features a different notable woman in STEM so that the young campers see themselves represented in the field.

Four area middle schools were represented at the 2022 camp, which also had the highest attendance rating since its inception. Camp leaders include many Notre Dame alumnae who travel from across the country to return to their alma mater and volunteer their time. Lenzen continues to mentor women in manufacturing roles at GE and remains active in supporting STEM activities in her own community of Wilmington, North Carolina.

DeJorie Monroe ’16

Charles B. Rangel Fellow, U.S. Department of State

MAJOR: SPANISH | MINORS: THEOLOGY, LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

Since graduating as a Hesburgh-Yusko Scholar in 2016, DeJorie Monroe ’16 has pursued professional and learning opportunities that help promote improved international educational systems. From teaching in the Dominican Republic, Argentina, and her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, to working in IT, redesigning education curriculum in Indianapolis, and earning a masters in management and leadership, Monroe continues to apply her academic interests to real life impacts on diverse communities. As the first Notre Dame alum to be selected as a Charles B. Rangel Graduate Fellow with the U.S. Department of State in 2022, she will add to that experience while training for a post in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Monroe launched her post-graduate career as an Orr Fellow at Genesys and served as Orr’s Director of Civic Engagement in Indianapolis. In this role, she led a team in re-designing curriculum in Indianapolis Public Schools. Monroe then turned towards international education, earning a Fulbright Fellowship to teach English in Argentina. Upon meeting foreign service officers and listening to their stories on their paths towards diplomacy, Monroe endeavored to pursue her own ambitions in foreign service. 

After returning from Argentina, Monroe worked as a dual language immersion educator. Striving to narrow her interests in public service, she pursued the Rangel International Affairs Graduate Fellowship, named for retired congressman Charles B. Rangel. This prestigious fellowship aims to bring more women and people of color into the foreign service. 

As a Rangel Fellow, Monroe will specialize in education and human capital within the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, interning both in Washington, D.C., and in an embassy abroad, and utilizing the language and interpersonal skills she has spent years honing. She strives to be an effective public diplomacy officer, pairing her passion for and commitment to intercultural understanding with a hope to improve the lives of students worldwide.

Ashley Murphy ’16

Clinical Psychology Doctoral Candidate, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

MAJORS: NEUROSCIENCE AND BEHAVIOR, ENGLISH

Ashley Murphy ’16 embodies what it means to serve the whole person, using education, clinical work, and research to empower those who have disabilities. In her research as a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate, Murphy combines her social justice and service values with her public health lens to develop mental health supports for the disability community.

After graduating from Notre Dame with degrees in neuroscience and behavior and English, Murphy took a leap of faith, turning down multiple medical school acceptances to teach special education in South Chicago with Teach for America. While initially intending to gain clarity on how to further disability rights as a physician, she discovered significant disparities in access to social emotional resources for her students, strengthening her pursuit of mental health equity for children with disabilities and their families in historically underserved communities. Murphy particularly noted the lack of parental input regarding social emotional services in special education, compelling her to work towards increasing parent voice in this critical area.

With this newfound inspiration, Murphy partnered with a professor at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine to develop an assessment measure that increases clinician understanding of what parents need to best engage with their children’s therapy services. By increasing parent engagement in children’s therapies, Murphy hopes that children become better supported to reach their full potential. 

Murphy intends to continue supporting the development of children with disabilities and empower their parents to help their children thrive. She currently works with parents, clinicians, and community leaders to elevate the voices of individuals with disabilities and their families throughout policy and research landscapes.

Dr. Adam René P. Rosenbaum ’16

Pediatrics Resident, University of Colorado School of Medicine

MAJORS: PREPROFESSIONAL STUDIES AND SPANISH | MINOR: THEOLOGY | GLYNN FAMILY HONORS PROGRAM

Researching at the intersection of faith, culture, and medicine, Dr. Adam René P. Rosenbaum ’16 seeks to honor and respect communities he serves, and is especially influenced by his own Mexican roots. Now a pediatric physician, his work takes him beyond the hospital and clinic and into the Hispanic communities he serves in Denver.

As a student at Notre Dame, Rosenbaum blended his love for Spanish and healthcare by working in a bio-analytical research lab for the National Spanish Research Council in Madrid, Spain. After studying abroad in Puebla, Mexico, his junior year, he also spent a summer interning at the Cristo Rey Community Center in Lansing, Michigan, working in its free health clinic to develop its Holistic Living Program. 

Rosenbaum, while still a medical student at the University of Michigan in 2018, published a children’s book to help families discuss the matter of cancer diagnosis with their own children. He followed that up with an essay on medical justice based on his experience volunteering at Michigan’s migrant farmworker clinic. 

Now, as a resident in pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Rosenbaum visits local schools in Denver with large Hispanic enrollments as a way to further understand the culture of the community he serves. He views the children as more than patients in his office and has made a concerted effort to immerse himself in their community to better serve their needs. In 2022, he presented his research and experiences in Denver at the Conference on Medicine and Religion in Portland, Oregon, which aims to explore the ways in which healthcare providers can better provide for members of the Latinx community in the clinic.

Rev. David Smith, C.S.C., ’14, ’20 M.Div.

Associate Pastor, St. Joseph Catholic Church

MAJORS: POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY | MINORS: LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE | MASTER OF DIVINITY

A parish priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross at St. Joseph Catholic Church in South Bend, Indiana, Rev. David Smith, C.S.C., ’14, ’20 M.Div. has dedicated his life to using his faith to serve others, embracing the values he learned while at Notre Dame. His passion for learning extends beyond himself — he shares his knowledge with his students and those in RCIA formation at his parish — and he demonstrates service to the marginalized in his mission work and local initiatives. Smith’s servant-heart is present in all of these endeavors, yet perhaps most of all in the small, daily acts of generosity that go unnoticed by others.

Upon graduation from Notre Dame, Smith entered Moreau Seminary and approached his pastoral training with a zeal for ministering to others. Early on, he immersed himself in service opportunities, traveling to Peru, Mexico, and the Texas-Mexico border to learn from the local communities and develop his Spanish-speaking skills. Back on campus at Notre Dame, he served as assistant rector in Dunne Hall and rector at Old College, keeping an open door for his residents and often cooking for them to ensure they felt at home. 

While at Moreau Seminary, Smith furthered his theological education by earning his Master of Divinity in 2020. Also in 2020, Smith professed his final vows in Holy Cross, vowing a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Countless friends and family attended his ordination in 2021, evidence of his commitment to his own community despite a busy academic and pastoral schedule. He was then assigned to St. John Vianney Parish in Goodyear, Arizona, where he dove into his new responsibilities as a bilingual priest, educator, coach, and confidante for both students and parishioners alike. In 2022, he returned to South Bend to serve as associate pastor at St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Connor Toohill ’14

Co-Founder & CEO, Ritual

MAJORS: ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Almost since he first stepped foot on campus, Connor Toohill ’14 has been putting his entrepreneurial and innovative mind to work toward solving society’s most pressing issues. As a first-year student in 2010, he co-founded and became editor-in-chief of the NextGen Journal, an online platform that offered his generation a space to have a voice on matters of national importance. Over two years, he built and directed an editorial staff of 150 students from more than 70 universities, publishing more than 2,000 articles and collaborating with the likes of MSNBC, the Washington Post, and Facebook. This endeavor was where the seeds of a calling to social entrepreneurship were planted.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Toohill pursued a three-year service stint as a teaching fellow at African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. During this time, he began to experience bouts of intense anxiety, learning to cope and function in order to fulfill his service work. It was in this time of personal doubt and unfamiliar circumstances that he found the inspiration to blaze a path towards social entrepreneurship. 

In 2019, Toohill co-founded Ritual, a start-up that provides a central mobile platform for proven well-being practices — some of which he utilized when in South Africa to manage his own anxiety. He came to understand that he was not alone in dealing with such issues and that these practices could have broad appeal and value if made available through the convenience of mobile devices. 

Partnering with Notre Dame professor Matt Bloom and leveraging Bloom’s groundbreaking “Wellbeing at Work” research, Toohill led Ritual’s first rounds of fundraising to garner $2.5M to launch the company, and runs day-to-day operations while spearheading partnerships with content providers. His work builds off his time as an undergraduate, when he worked with Bloom and Rev.. Dan Groody, C.S.C, ’86 to create the ground-breaking elective course at Notre Dame known as “The Heart’s Desire and Social Change.”

Dr. Rene Bermea ’12

Clinical Fellow, Harvard Medical School Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, Massachusetts General Hospital / Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Transplantation Sciences, Massachusetts General Hospital

MAJORS: BIOCHEMISTRY AND PHILOSOPHY

Since his youth, Dr. Rene Bermea ’12 has understood the profound impact that biomedical research has on people’s lives. He was a freshman in high school when his younger sister, at only six years old, was diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening brain tumor that required surgery and left her dependent on a slew of medications to support her endocrine system. This served as his motivation to pursue a career in medicine. Understanding that his sister’s life-sustaining drugs wouldn’t have been possible without the work of biomedical scientists, research became his priority. 

Following high school, Bermea made the trip from his rural Texas town on the Mexican border to his dream school, Notre Dame, and spent his summers conducting research. He eventually made his way to the labs affiliated with MD Anderson Cancer Center, the hospital that saved his sister’s life. He later attended the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine for medical school, where he stayed for residency training in internal medicine. Now, as a fellow in the Harvard Medical School Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Bermea is caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients while conducting research in pursuit of subspecialization in lung transplantation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).

While caring for patients in the ICU, Bermea was the lead author on a published study that found an association between devastating intracranial hemorrhages and inflammatory markers in patients with COVID-19 on ECMO, a machine that continuously removes blood from the body, oxygenates it when the lungs cannot, and then returns it back to the patient. He is now working in the laboratories at MGH’s Center for Transplantation Science, hoping to uncover the immunological mechanisms of chronic rejection after transplant. He is also working with a group at BIDMC and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that aims to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify systemic disparities and existing biases affecting the receipt of lungs for transplantation.

Matt Conaghan ’15

Head of Marketing, Change Donations

MAJOR: MARKETING

In 2019, Matt Conaghan ’15 hopped a one-way flight from Washington, D.C., to Dublin. After leaving his copywriting role with Ogilvy & Mather, his journey to the Emerald Isle led him to the opposite end of the marketing spectrum and into the world of nonprofit fundraising at Change Donations. 

Co-founded by Lizzy Hayashida and Conaghan’s brother, William, Change Donations is an international fundraising platform that helps nonprofits and schools grow with the power of spare change. The platform allows users to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar and donate the difference to their favorite causes. As the head of marketing and branding, Conaghan leads the conception, creation, and promotion of marketing materials while also focusing on design and charity growth. 

A Maryland native, Conaghan earned his degree in marketing from Notre Dame in 2015 and his master’s in 2020 in digital marketing and strategy from Trinity College Dublin, where he now also works as an adjunct teaching fellow. While at Notre Dame, he was also selected as the youngest head writer in the history of the Keenan Revue. Conaghan continues to showcase his comedy chops on his social media channels, where his impressions and humorous skits have earned him over 120,000 followers.