Erin Anderson-White Face ’06 was set on attending an Ivy League college after high school. Her mother, a 1976 University of Dayton alum, insisted she tour UD. That was when Anderson-White Face first experienced what she calls “Marianist magic.”
“From the people working in [Kennedy Union], to campus ministry, to Susan Ferguson (who was the Center for Catholic Education executive director at the time) — everyone was so welcoming and it really inspired me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m definitely going here.’”
Anderson-White Face came to Ohio from her hometown of Milwaukee where she grew up with a Catholicism that was protective, nurturing and active. Her Catholic high school participated in a “Day of Silence”, a national demonstration by LGBTQ+ students and allies. She recalls, when protestors arrived, the school’s teachers and staff, including the priests and sisters, formed a line to block them and buffer the students.
She said her experience as a young, queer woman in Ohio didn’t feel as welcoming. But the more she explored faith at UD, the more she found a safe community that was more than open — it was warm and inviting.
“That is Marianist magic, when you experience it and you’re a part of it, and you want to bring more of it into the world because it is so powerful and transformative,” she said. “That’s the kind of welcoming world I want to be in.”
As the University’s community beckoned her, the other pillars of the Marianist charism — Mary, faith, inclusivity and mission — gave her tools to build a brighter world.
She majored in international studies and religious studies. She was an honors student and a Chaminade scholar. She found mentorship and connection with the Marianist community around her and professors like Theo and Linda Majka, the first two people she came out to at UD.
By the end of Anderson-White Face’s senior year, she had taken vows to become a lay Marianist.
“The Marianist charism helped me to grow and move in my faith to take it to the next level of vocation,” Anderson-White Face said. “Marianists helped me form a stronger identity of how I want to be Catholic in the world.”
After graduation, she moved to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to the Jesuit-run Maȟpíya Lúta (formerly Red Cloud Indian School). She worked and volunteered with them for five years as a bus driver, kindergarten aide, pastoral minister, academic counselor and volunteer coordinator, among other roles.
Anderson-White Face returned to UD for a master’s degree in public administration, which taught her to organize, advocate and mobilize in public service. She remained rooted in her faithful work as a Fitz Center for Leadership in Community fellow and worked in refugee resettlement with Catholic Social Services until graduating in 2011.
Later, she married her wife, whom she met through mutual friends on the reservation, and they fostered three children. Together they moved around the country a few times as Anderson-White Face expanded an eclectic resume while approaching every job — whether in real estate, nonprofit, journalism or elsewhere — with equity and care.
But when she started working with the Marianist Social Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on educating and supporting the Marianist Family in North America in social justice efforts, she knew it was right for her.
“It has been one of the greatest joys of my life to reconnect and work with and for the Marianists. It felt like this convergence of my whole experience — the faith, the Marianist identity, Catholicism and all of the justice topics,” Anderson-White Face said. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I get to wake up in the morning and try to make the world a better place with Marianists, with the best people on Earth? Yes, please and thank you!’”
Leading the organization as the director of mission means she gets to protect others. And when faced with the seemingly insurmountable man-made suffering in this world, she finds grace in a familiar quote.
“One of the things we sometimes struggle with as an organization, as do our volunteers, is that we have to do everything within the confines of church teaching, so we have this gentle approach. It really reminds me of Chaminade’s quote of, ‘Let nothing get in the way and be like water and move around the obstacles,’ the work we do, it reminds me of that,” she said, paraphrasing the Society of Mary founder. “I’ve witnessed so much power in the gentle, Marianist way of advancing these causes — I love it so much.”
"I am like a brook that makes no effort to overcome obstacles in its way. All the obstacles can do is hold me up for a while, as a brook is held up; but during that time it grows broader and deeper and after a while it overflows the obstruction and flows along again. This is how I am going to work." - Father William Joseph Chaminade