Greg Jao serves InterVarsity as Senior Assistant to the President, focusing on executive office communications and external relations. Greg has more than two decades of experience with InterVarsity, working at InterVarsity Press as well as in the field. Prior to his ministry with InterVarsity, Greg worked as an employee benefits attorney in Chicago. Greg is a graduate of The University of Chicago (B.A. English, 1990) and The Northwestern University School of Law (J.D., 1994).
It was a great year for the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog, thanks to partnerships with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA campus staff ministers, campus grad fellowships, and individual emerging scholars.
Except for some years taken off to raise children, Karen has spent her adult life in and around InterVarsity — originally as a student and campus staff member in Michigan and currently in Atlanta. An entrepreneur at heart, she and some student leaders started the grad fellowship at Michigan State and the MBA fellowship at Georgia Tech. She loves to use her gifts of hospitality and teaching to create a welcome place for people to connect with God and with each other. Currently, serving as the Director of Women in the Academy and Professions, she is bringing together women in graduate school and beyond to encourage, support, and mentor one another to live fully into the call of God on their lives as they navigate the challenges of academia and the professional world. Karen lives in Marietta, Georgia with her husband and mother while all three of her sons are studying in universities. She loves dark chocolate, good coffee, the Avett Brothers, and British TV.
The Emerging Scholars Network has been the main point of intersection between my faith and my scholarly pursuits. With the connections that I have made through the ESN and the vast amount of resources that the network has provided, I now feel far more confident about being a Christian in a largely pluralistic and postmodern profession. As a graduate student, I don't feel so alone anymore as I know that the ESN and Intervarsity are behind me. Furthermore, I absolutely cannot wait to become involved in a faculty group down the road as God calls me to be a light in a secular university. Note: Josh has written for the ESN Blog.
Thomas Grosh IV, Emerging Scholars Network’s Associate Director, shares some reflections inspired by Romans 12:1-21, Philippians 2:1-18, and Psalm 122:1-9 which challenge us to live as God created us to live.
Connecting students and faculty in this way opens many fruitful doors. Christian students now know of Christian faculty or, more precisely, faculty who engage in an academically rigorous life and yet still believe in God.
