Integritas Forum with Dan Farrell

hi friends thanks so much for joining us tonight for this new initiative of the soren fellows program the integritas forum these interview style conversations which will occur once a month throughout the academic year are intended to provide you our soaring fellows with opportunities to hear from and engage with successful professionals across a wide range of sectors be it business medicine law policy finance etc about their experiences and reflections on maintaining personal and ethical integrity across their personal professional and faith lives these conversations will range from considerations on work-life balance personal discernment and family life and practical insight about growing in the faith the inspiration for this recurring event is really twofold first at the soren fellows program we always seek to elevate the relational character of your formation and resist the characteristic paradigm of a transactional nature of education that is so common in universities today these conversations are intended to allow you to learn and know about someone in narrative rather than learn just some simple set of abstract ideas apart from personal narrative and second as you well know the de nicola center is proudly a scholarly center at a research university but at the same time we recognize that the majority of our soaring fellows who we get to form and engage here on campus won't necessarily have careers bound to the university or academia rather you'll be scattered across public and private enterprises and finance in engineering in law in policy and business and the like many of you will also be moms or dads husbands or wives good friends and counselors perhaps clergy or vowed religious in the relational spirit of the center and the soren fellows program we hope these conversations provide you opportunities to glean both practical advice and enduring insights from persons who display virtues of truly integral human formation whether whether they work in the field in which you plan to enter have a similar vocational path that you anticipate or not now of course under normal circumstances these conversations would best take place over rocco's pizza and lacroix which we plan on doing once our shared life together regain some normalcy but in the interim we'll host these over zoom which i hope provides you the opportunity to engage them on your own time and fruitfully sometime on campus whether walking to class or perhaps a stroll around the lakes i've interviewed one-on-one our guest tonight for about 20 to 30 minutes with topics ranging from personal discernment and family life to professional development and everything in between after that we'll have a live q a with our guest which will last about 20 minutes or so so we encourage you to stick around type your questions into the chat function and we'll be glad to respond to them as we're able and now it's my pleasure to introduce this evening's guest dan farrell is the group senior vice president of sales and marketing at specialty care the united states leading provider of profusion and intraoperative neural monitoring services and other critical support areas working with more than 1100 hospitals and over 13 000 physicians dan's experience spans leading sales teams growing brand equity initiating and leading strategic initiatives maximizing profitability and so on he has a unique blend of experiences managing the development and execution of strategic road maps financial models and marketing strategies across a variety of organizations previous to specialty care dan served as the chief operating officer at a technology startup bendley and prior to that role dan spent nine years as vice president of marketing at press gaining associates in that role he helped double the company's market share of all u.s hospitals and established press gainey as the clear leader in patient experience improvement dan began his career at craft foods after serving four years as a captain in the us army dan earned his mba from northwestern university's kellogg school of management but most importantly to us dan earned his ba in business administration from notre dame where he also served in the army rotc as well as a white house on the varsity football team as a reminder dan will join us for a live q a right after our conversation so stick around well dan thank you so much for taking the time to join us tonight really appreciate it hey pete glad to be here thanks for having me so tell us a little bit about yourself where's home for you right now what are you doing professionally and you're a husband and a father tell us a little bit about your your family life yeah you bet um i actually live right here in south bend indiana um i have a beautiful wife petra uh totally out kicked my coverage uh as they say uh with with her i don't know how i convinced her to uh to marry me but have uh five awesome kids actually just dropped the oldest one off here at notre dame uh just today i gave him the the old high five pat on the back and said one down four to go uh so we are uh we're we really love it here um and uh just uh and professionally i work for companies based out of nashville i run their sales and marketing organization we do specialized staffing for operating rooms so hard to find folks that do some critical jobs in the operating room we help hospitals efficiently find those folks and and drive better quality awesome thank you yeah no i'm in a second you're out kicking the coverage it's a good habit to get into so dan you're you're a domer um you know one of the questions that i love to ask soren fellows when they're interviewing to become part of the program is like what drew you to notre dame like i i tell these students like look if you're getting into notre dame st mary's holy cross like you're a good student and you've got you've got options and some of those options are going to be maybe cheaper or maybe more beneficial professionally um you know what about notre dame makes it so distinctive that draws students to it i love their answers and i'd love to hear what what you have to say in your experience yeah well i'm really not sure i had a choice um going into it i grew up in pensacola florida at the back bar at mcguire's irish pub watching tony rice and rocket ishmael run touchdowns back uh after kickoff so uh my dad went to notre dame my sister went there so it's kind of a family tradition but you know kind of looking in hindsight you know lou holt said it best you know notre dame is not a uh a four-year decision it's a 40-year decision and it's really kind of played that way for me i look at three different buckets you know the the first is kind of the faith formation um you know i can remember the first sunday i was in the dorm by myself thinking like freedom's great don't have to go to church this is awesome uh 10 o'clock at night comes around and a couple underclassmen said hey boys time to go to church um and i knew at that point at that point i was at the right place um the second bucket for me and and the students listen to this no uh the friendships you'll make now um last a lifetime uh just with a buddy who is also dropping a kid off at school um and it was like we were we were back at school so those and those will last you a lifetime not only from you know an accountability standpoint to you know your face like your family life but also work life as well you'll see these these folks in the business world and and they'll be great connections you know and and lastly i'll tell you one of the biggest things for me was the notre dame brand um you know as you get out in in the work world the notre dame brand means something that moniker is extremely important um you know in my role i will have to go and sell executives at hospitals these are ceos that have been around the block and and i make sure somehow they know i'm associated with the university somehow that i'm an alumni whether or not that's a tag on my bag or it's something on my business card and the sole reason why i do it is one of two things is going to happen either they're going to hate me or they're going to like me um either way i have a great conversation starter right so you know if you look at kind of that the bundle of benefits of notre dame you can't beat it yeah that i mean that resonates with me as a domer myself though um maybe not as uh grizzled in experiences as you are but yeah when when you look at kind of the the integrated kind of formation that's possible here through faith academics and that professional kind of network that's made available it's something that maybe is hard to see at times when you're a student kind of living day to day slogging through getting up in the dorm going to going to north or south and going to class and getting through it but it's something that you kind of can see more in in retrospect right and i'm i'm about 10 years out from the time that i was in undergrad and some of the benefits of my time here i can only see five to ten years out i couldn't see it during during my actual time as a student and it seems to be the case like when you talk to any alum that's going to be their story right is that their fruits to kind of being here that yeah you can see when you're on the ground and you're living and breathing the air that's here but it's actually so much more longitudinal than that if you can excuse that term but like the long-term benefits is something that that you can you can carry with you forward which whether it's professionally or in your faith or hopefully some combination of all those things it's something that makes this place i mean in my mind and i guess to your measure to something totally distinct to our peers in the ivy league or stanford or something like that so that's thank you for sharing that that's that's awesome and to tack on to that i think you're absolutely right i think the the if you think of the value equation in you know higher ed right now right are the benefits over my price gonna be greater than what i could get at a competitor at a different school that's a great question students should be asking right now um but i still say that the value and then we went through this conversation with my oldest um those benefits still far outweigh um you know the increased price that you're going to pay to go here yeah absolutely and there's yeah there's something that you can't put a price tag on that is notre dame you know and uh that's something worth holding on to so let's transition a little bit into like what you what you do now professionally i mean you're a senior vice president of a major organization you know i think one of the questions that a lot of our students have is like gosh that sounds great and i'd love to be that successful in the eyes of the world but i don't know how to get from point a as an undergrad in mendoza or studying econ or whatever to point you know c or d which is where you are now like what what's been your story how have you gotten from point a to point d yeah it's been a story that you know i would not have written um because it you know took left and right turns um you know i i after going to notre dame um i was uh a an roc rotc student uh here as well so my first four years after school was being a lieutenant in the army at fort stewart georgia right outside of savannah so from there i had no idea where i was going you know it's funny my my wife and i uh you know petra made us made and i can say that fill out surveys of where we would be in 5 10 15 years not even close um you know i thought i was going to be living in charlotte north carolina living on lake norman you know doing logistics and so not even close so but after getting out of the military i was super fortunate to be picked up to um be in the brand management program at kraft foods uh and and being a brand manager you basically have the keys to the car to the brand uh you market it you sell it you work with operations you work with production it's a great great experience so from there i started thinking about hey marketing is a great career um you know i i like the business aspect of it i like the analytics of it so i started tracking down that that route we made a live stage decision and moved to south bend about 15 years ago so and really what drove me to that was i like being closer to the customer um brand management is great you you kind of manage from the top but you really don't get to you know see customers a ton so moved to business to business and in healthcare um and then did that for ten uh ten or so years and and really um cut my teeth in terms of the interaction between sales and marketing and how how important that is and how you can use both to enhance the the total picture um and also got involved with the private equity at that point as well um had a a wonderful experience uh working for companies that were owned by private equity then moved into a startup um actually right out of the business school here at notre dame and you're talking about you know some of the things you should do while you're in your school keep continuing to network the professor that started the company lives across the street from me and i most likely could have had you know an undergrad um so coming back um you know working with him to start a product for for three or four years was was great uh then got pulled back into uh healthcare to help a company uh grow and kind of transition into growth mode and you know that's where i'm at today yeah i think that's so fascinating that you know as maybe a junior or a senior you really want to kind of be as intentional as you can to kind of get the right fit out of college you know it seems like such a big decision and almost kind of like life defining like it sets you on a certain trajectory and it seems like in certain respects that's true like you want to make good prudent decisions but at the same time you just don't know what zigs and zags are going to come along and ultimately it seems like it's your kind of flexibility and responsiveness to kind of roll with the punches in some sense make the best out of unique circumstances and you know particular positions or sectors that you're in to kind of begin to carve out a path but it's not necessarily something that you can manipulate from your junior or senior year in college through the time that you hit your your 50s and you're in your professional prime or whatever so there's the kind of strikes me is that there's a kind of like you kind of have to not try to control everything and and let it play out in a sense and just kind of say yes to what's put in front of you yeah and and i would i think you're spot-on pete and i would tack on to that that you know you have to embrace the zig and zag because you're not going to have the ideal job coming out of school but i'll tell you what companies look for diversity and thought so who would have thought a junior military officer you know a captain in the army getting out kraft foods would want this person to go market to moms with kids ages 6 to 12. i knew nothing about that but they liked the leadership aspect they liked the diversity of thought and the only reason i could get that kind of job was embracing some of these really crappy roles i had in the army and and driving great accomplishments from them so you have to embrace the zigs and zags and use it as an opportunity yeah and and that seems like something i mean whether people are going to enter into kind of finance or consulting or they're going to get into non-profit work or they're going to go into grad school i mean this seems like something that's kind of more of a habit of just a well-formed person than say someone who is just strictly going to kind of enter a particular field it's just kind of more baked into who you are rather than defining yourself based off of what your particular job is at the time right on right totally so amidst all the zigging and zagging professionally it's not as though this is the only thing that was happening in your life i mean you aren't just grinding professionally and nothing else is going on you have people who you love relationships are developing could you share with us a little bit about kind of just your discernment about a vocation to to marriage and the family in the context of all this professional growth and navigating your own development especially for some of our fellows who are thinking about well i i want to be successful and i want to thrive in my profession but i also know part of me is being called to to be a husband or a wife or a mom or a dad yeah um you know the the one thing i'd say is you can do it all don't ever think like you have to give up one for the other you know really for for petra and i it comes down to having the right priorities and being very deliberate about those priorities right you know we we look at each other talk about it often um you know our first and foremost goal is to get each other to heaven get our kids to heaven and then put ourselves in a position you know to to do great things for other people um and and if we keep that you know top of mind um you know everything else works out um i will tell you a quick story that um when when petra and i were living in chicago at craft foods we had two kids living in the city um my commute i was probably on the road you know at least two hours a day and that's if i got up at four in the morning and and got in with no traffic um and at one point we looked at each other and said hey is this is this right you know is this gonna be you know the the normal for us that we have two three hours of unproductive family time with you in the car um and at the end of the day we said no so we had a choice we could move to the suburbs continue this great trajectory of a career i had at craft foods or take a step sideways maybe even a step back you know move to south bend take a different job smaller company um and and see what happens um and so we made the decision for the right reasons we said hey let's move closer to family let's let's have more focused family time um and turns out this company i joined was just bought by private equity they turned into growth mode they were looking for a guy like me um and and we tripled the company three or four times so at the end of the day it's it if you make the decisions for the right reasons i found in my experience it all works out okay yeah that's so great to hear and even i mean personally speaking as a young professional when you want to calculate your way from you know step a to step b to step c it's more just a matter of having good scaffolding you know i guess people would say like in a catholic world good good virtues are ways of thinking habits of thinking and praying and acting that like you don't need to have a formula it seems not necessarily to get from point a to point d or c or whatever but it's just simply a way of approaching certain situations as they come up that you don't need to have the particular answer but you have a way of approaching them that ultimately kind of has your good and your family's good kind of at the heart of it right you know i look at it you know you have your faith life your family life and your work life um in that order have your priorities set that way um and and adjust and think things will work out yeah absolutely thank you so much so you know i know your family i get to work with your wife i've been over your home i've played with your kids you're a dad to five awesome amazing kids you know from a from a freshman in college as you mentioned to middle school you know and i think one of the things that stands out in in the in the minds of you know an undergrad or maybe even a graduate student soaring fellow is like gosh well how do i how do i balance that that well and how do i kind of approach situations when kind of as you said about chicago like man should i be spending more time with my kids is my work life really getting in the way of my kind of ability to kind of put family first i mean do you have any like advice or just pearls of wisdom for our soaring fellows as they kind of like try to think through that in anticipation not having necessarily live that out yet but maybe getting frozen in in a little bit of fear and trepidation about well i'm nervous that i can't do it all so how how do you how do you do it all for you know a a big family from a freshman in college to someone in middle school yeah it's a good question and and you know if if i look back and and think through what has helped petra and i'd be successful it's sacrifice right um any success in life comes with a sacrifice and you have to know what you're sacrificing and um and then understand kind of where that's gonna where that's gonna take you if you think about you know when i went to business school i did it at night when the kids were asleep you know i sacrificed the time watch binge watching whatever show was on at that point right it was taking away my personal time not anyone else's time not my faith time not my family time so success is always always take sacrifice um so it's understanding when you come into the the work world that it's it's not going to be all roses you're not going to get that perfect job right away sacrifice the time to make it happen sacrifice you know you know your your sleep time all those things that are easy to give up that don't impact you know the rest of the more important aspects of your life so i would say you know and and really drive to be accomplishment driven at work um this is one of the things that you know you know beyonce drives me nuts um with with some folks is they're they're okay with the resume reading i was responsible for x y and z um i'm going to pass that resume right by i want to see what you did with those responsibilities so i need to see the accomplishments underneath there and and it really doesn't matter what that job was and kind of back to our earlier point if that zig and zag is not perfect but you knocked it out of the park i'm gonna really be interested in in talking to you so um you know it but it'll all take sacrifice right because it's not exactly what you wanted um but you have to sacrifice and really do your job great thank you that's that's awesome all right dan to close it out you know as you look back at your undergrad experience you know what were some things that were easy to gloss over that maybe as you look back now you probably shouldn't have glossed over and what are some things or a thing that you kind of obsessed over that really actually didn't end up being worth the worry yeah great great question that's thinking way back too um since i was an rotc student it was really the easy to gloss over kind of interview prep networking with my peers as well as professors especially professors i wish i would have talked to way more professors because you know looking back at the last 15 years i could have used them as a resource i could have used them to help me bounce ideas off of they connect me with other people that they they know so i think you know that that interview prep that that networking is is critical i also say kind of on the networking side um definitely network network network um and when i say that i mean you have to do it in in a real genuine way um you know the the last thing i want to see is a forum email or through linkedin that you sent 20 different notre dame alumni it's going to get deleted however if there's a genuine interest from a notre dame alumni i will stop what i'm doing and respond to that email and say hey i'd love to talk to you how can i help can i put you in contact with somebody so please be genuine about that network but networking but do it you have to do it that's probably something i i glossed over obsessed about you know one of the things that lou holtz drove uh uh into our heads was that you know um actually he had a great quote he would say that whoever wrote the small stuff um must have been a loser because it's all about small stuff it's all about um you know doing the little things right which i completely uh agree with and i think it's 100 necessary i think though that i sacrificed the the bigger picture for the small stuff so i think you have to do both my advice would be to always think about the small stuff but in the bigger picture of what your organization what your group is trying to accomplish yeah awesome it makes so much sense i think even a catholic point of view you kind of try to take care of your interior house make sure that you're rightly ordered that you're kind of loving and addressing things on the most local level without losing track of that kind of ultimate horizon you know it all kind of works itself out so long as you control what you can in a faithful and kind of virtuous way and the the chips will fall where the chips will fall but providence is real right and uh no matter how much we we think we can control it so long as we keep our interior house in order we're going to be in pretty good shape so dan final question and one that we ask soar and fellows from time to time you're added to nicholas center for ethics and culture tailgate in the fall beautiful september day you have a chance to crack open a lacroix with anyone who's ever lived who are you opening a cold one with and why well if i'm at a dcec tailgate um it definitely won't be a la croix uh as we all know the the best adult the adult beverage selection is at the dcep tailgate so uh i got to qualify this answer uh a bit so um uh deceased and living right um i guess can i get two sure i get all right so deceased it would probably have to be my grandfather um grumpy grumpy was a uh a noted excuse me a college football player and a college football coach but he passed away when i was in grade school so he never really got to see me play and i would love to sit around at a tailgate and and listen to his stories and also kind of game plan on how the the irish are going to take care of business that day so that'd be the the first one so someone that is is living this is this is even harder because at a deep tailgate you could run into william barr you could run into the potential next supreme court justice of the united states so this list is pretty pretty stacked um but i will have to tell you and this is going to be pretty cheesy i would walk past all of them and go sit down right next to the best looking 5'3 5 foot 3 woman named petra and and i'd have a conversation with her the rest of the day so that is awesome that is awesome that is family values in action at the nicholas center for ethics and culture man that is awesome dan thanks so much for taking the time to join us and share your your wisdom and your practical insight it's invaluable and hopefully for our students just provides a little insight into like what it's like to navigate the real world after notre dame well you know at the same time just trying to be intentional about the faith and live a virtuous good life so thanks dan for leading the way i appreciate you having me pete thanks a bunch you got it awesome well thank you so much friends for joining us this evening and hey dan how's it going awesome awesome we'll get started with a couple questions that kind of came through based off of our conversation um and hopefully we can get through as many of these as possible um just want to send a quick note to our soaring fellows um thank you so much i mean it's been a crazy day guys with all the news coming from campus and so thanks for joining us um hopefully this has been a time to kind of regain some normalcy get an insight into someone's life beyond campus beyond everything that's going on right now so um just a note of gratitude to all of you um for for joining us so dan um one of the questions that came through was you know obviously um your faith impacts how you think about your your family life and and all that there's a foundation to that obviously you said you know your your job is to get each other to heaven and take care of your kids and all that you know in in the business that you're in um you know what what role does faith have or how does it inform how you think about your role kind of at the intersection of the kind of the christian life and business slash medicinal care yeah great great question pete um you know i i don't necessarily um yeah i don't think you necessarily need to work in a non-profit or a faith-based organization to have your professional life be informed by your faith um you know at the end of the day i think this comes in the form of leadership both direct and cross-functional a lot of you folks when when you get your first job are going to be won't have direct reports so you'll be leading cross-functionally influencing your your peers um and so forth and i think you know not to quote coach holtz too much but i think his philosophy around life here is pretty applicable um you know he talks about living by three principles do the right thing always do your best and show others you care and and i think this is a great formula for thinking about how your faith can inform your professional life so as you're sitting down thinking and thinking through how do i influence my peers right now you know is there a way that i can lead um that puts my faith life first um so you know i guess my advice would be to encourage everybody to creatively think about what it is to serve the church without reducing it to working for the church it's not always what you do it's how you do it and and we need leaders like you all influencing every sector of society awesome yeah thanks and that speaks so much to kind of i think the what we would say like the universal call of holiness or sanctity it's it's not kind of cornered within a particular discipline or a particular sector but we need excellent doctors excellent lawyers excellent salesmen who have that interior disposition who have that right ordering within them to really show how the faith can kind of provide the the context provide the social conditions for upholding human dignity kind of promoting the common good and and so on it's not just kind of ghettoized within particular ecclesial ministries or whatever so that that makes a lot of sense to me thank you um another question came in so um the student asked you know one of the things that concerns me is kind of being faced with ethical dilemmas in the context of a future workplace that's easy to think about them you know in class or whatever and hypothesize about what you would do but like how do you think through um those situations and what's been helpful in navigating them in your experience yeah that's a really good question um you know i think first of all you're gonna come across ethical situations sooner than you think and sooner than you want um you know and it really comes down in my mind to having the courage to do the right thing it's tough i mean if we peel back the onion you know we all know what's right and wrong so we have to stay convicted to to our principles a couple of things you know i think about probably in that context would be you know prepare for the situation by building your personal brand on ethical behavior you know if you think about every interaction we have with you know anybody in our business setting in our in our personal life our faith life we're establishing our our brand by the way we interact with them so establish yourself in the business world as someone who takes the high road so when you do need to have a corrective conversation with a co-worker or a direct report it doesn't come as a surprise right um you know it's kind of funny some of my teammates call me a boy scout um and you know it's kind of funny but and that's great but at the end of the day i've built that brand on purpose right um i'm not going to have a sales person come to me with a deal that crosses the line they just know not to bring it to me because it's not they know that's not going to get approved the other thing i would think about too would probably be around you know make sure you keep things factual in these conversations um opinions can lead things sideways very quickly keep them factual and lastly and probably most importantly i'm not a smart guy so whenever i enter those conversations you know i i say father ted's prayer to the holy spirit says you know come holy spirit need your help um and that gets me through it awesome yeah thanks tim that makes again a lot of sense and i mean to my measure you know is more like a basic human christian intuition you know this is its application within a particular business sector you know a particular professional role um but the uh the prayer come holy spirit can be is equally uttered going into a sales meeting or before your dissertation defense or before a final exam um and one of the things that kind of i share with students and that students share with me is like doing it on the on the small things will allow you to do it when it really counts with the like metal level decisions so yeah thank you another question from a junior in mendoza um so what made you decide to go to graduate school um is in mba or an advanced degree in the business world kind of a ticket required for entry uh into executive level positions marketing and finance things like that and question of you know should i wait a few years get some experience then go back to grad school or should i just like slog right on through and bang it out right that's a great question um to answer the first part to be honest with you um i i went to grad school because it was too good of an opportunity to pass up uh when i went to craft foods they they they said they were going to pay for the entire education so i was like i have to do it i'm in chicago with two of the best business schools in the country so uh i'd be stupid not to um that doesn't mean it was easy and i think i may have portrayed it that way that i just sacrificed personal time in the in the recording you so i will tell you that it was tough i mean we had a one-year-old and a three-year-old um group meetings on saturdays classes almost every night as as you guys know how that that is a tough slog when you're at school um and it put a lot of stress on the family time and uh and petra as as a rock star as she always has helped us guide us through that so that was that was great um but in terms of when to go i do have a pretty strong opinion about that um i find that those that work for a couple years after undergraduate have a much better experience when they go back to grad school i've had the pleasure of recruiting both undergrads and grads and i asked this question a lot because i i can tell the difference somebody that has gone straight from undergrad to grad school because they're very technical but don't really have the real world experience to apply to what they learned in grad school so i think kind of put a little more flesh on the bone there you know i think that folks that have worked for a couple years can apply more practical relevant experience to their graduate experience and it makes for a much better um you know understanding of the material and almost equally as important i find that you have better interaction with your professors um and and that is really important as you go to grad school and at that business school or or whatever grad school you choose um but what that enables is a really great conversation because they're looking for relevant timely experience from the business world that they can use in in their publications that they can use in in developing their their studies so i think um that that is another big big benefit of that and i think the last part of that question was around do you need it i would say not necessarily but i will say that it's going to give you a leg up as you compete specifically as you get towards the higher levels of an organization and and every industry has its own set of norms of when you need to go back so i would also kind of use that as guidance as well it could be different in brand management than it could be in finance depending on when you need to go yeah that's that's a great point i can reflect only really on on my experience and i went right through from undergrad at notre dame to grad school at bc and as i look back at that i thought it was a great decision and and there were good things that that came from it honestly and truly um not the least of which being employed at the center now but um but there are certain kind of points of maturation that are missed uh by not going into the workforce that i can see that so some of my peers at bc had been working in higher ed whether with students or in research and just brought a particular kind of perspective that you can tell kind of gave greater color and definition to what they were talking about and allowed them to engage the content a little bit more fully um so yeah i i totally agree that it's kind of somewhat discipline and sector specific and it can kind of be determined by your life circumstances as well but that's kind of in my mind embracing the zig and the zag again it's like you know there isn't necessarily going to be a formula that you can just slap on to any one situation and say this is the way it should work but rather it's kind of a responsiveness to what the needs are here and now and to embrace kind of the the unknown or the zig zag so yeah thanks dan absolutely um i think we have a time for about one or two more questions a question came in about parish life and just like you know uh what role that has had kind of for you and your family um the benefits of kind of anchoring down in a parish how you think about that or kind of what the benefits have been for for you and your family just kind of in in the life of of faith beyond beyond work yeah another good question and i will tell you um you know uh petr and i are from pensacola florida um so there's no reason why we should be living in south bend indiana you know the snow capital the midwest uh and and what keeps us here is our faith family at st joe parish downtown uh and we we i think we experienced this a little later than most um you know we were faithful churchgoers in the army and then in chicago but we really didn't find uh a family home um in terms of a parish until we got to south bend and and i think that has something to do with as your kids start going to the grade school you can really find um that family aspect from the grade school all the way through the parish and then as well as you know how you hang out socially with with some of those folks so i think for us um it not only has been you know just crucial to uh the faith formation of petra and i but also to our family um and then also for keeping us in south bend and keeping us in a family where uh a faith family where we feel super comfortable um and and i get to play baseball with guys like pete on on the parish baseball team absolutely go porters right absolutely awesome well we're coming up basically to the end of our time dan thank you so much for joining us this evening and sharing in conversation a few days back um friends soaring fellows um we'll make sure that you can get in touch with dan if you have any follow-up questions that might be more suitable over email just make sure you don't send one of those form emails or else it will get thrown out so let's follow up on this when we can dan god bless thank you so much have a have a great night and uh go irish great thanks pete thanks everybody awesome thanks everybody take care you

Channel: de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture ndethics

Views: 45

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Id: 66W71OHBkKs

Length: 38min 26sec (2306 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020