One evening two months ago, four sisters came to visit Jena Gullo ’98 at her office. at her office. Healthy and lively, the young women are successful in school, participating in activities like basketball and cheerleading, and have set their career goals high: becoming the first female Hispanic president of the United States.
Three years earlier, the sisters hadn’t been doing as well. They’d been placed with Gullo for emergency foster care after being neglected by their mother, and having been both physically and sexually abused by additional family members.
“So much trauma,” says Gullo. “How does one survive that? But I have to remind myself, I am one, first step they can take to breaking out of their cycle of abuse. That’s why I do foster care, and that’s why I do this work.”
The work to which Gullo refers is her lifelong dedication to serving and improving the lives of others. In addition to being a foster parent, she has participated in and led mission work all over the globe, from assisting children living in poverty in the streets of Guatemala to nurturing AIDS-stricken orphans in Kenya.
Today, Gullo is the executive director of the Missouri Slope Areawide United Way in Bismarck, ND. In the past four years she has worked with the organization, she has shifted its emphasis toward increased, measureable results in solving major issues in the region, including ending hunger, providing opportunities and support for children to be successful in and out of school, and assisting and empowering those living in poverty.
“The reason I most love my position is because I realize the opportunity to actually solve problems – major problems,” says Gullo. “The more time I put in, the greater impact I have. The more people I inspire to join me in my work, the greater reach we have.”
She can trace her passion for problem-solving through service work back to her days as a sophomore, when she participated in a service trip to Guatemala. “We did manual labor, building a retaining wall at a school and building a home,” says Gullo.
“While we certainly did help the poor, it is cliché yet true that the trip helped each of us to a much greater extent,” she says.
Gullo worked to pay her own way for the trip, and worked again – washing dishes in the Hub, fundraising for the Geneseo Foundation, and driving the campus Safe Car — to earn money so that she could study abroad in Italy the following year. These trips were crucial, she says, in providing her “a chance to create my own path in life.”
Gullo’s path is one she feels in her bones: “what makes me truly happy is the belief that I can create real sustainable social change to improve systems and conditions that change lives,” says Gullo. “It doesn’t matter if it is in one person, one village, one country or throughout the world.
“Well, throughout the world would be best,” says Gullo, “ but that might take some time!”