Leap of faith

Corporate success and clinical care gave way to a quieter, more intentional life for two alumnae called back to their Franciscan beginnings

Stories by By Tom Donahue, ’76      |      Photos by Danny Bush, ’13, ’15

 

Karen (Halliday) Pulaski, Class of 1984, couldn’t suppress the nagging feeling that, despite loving her 32-year career as an occupational therapist, she was “supposed to be doing something else.”

Mari Snyder, Class of 1990, cherished her life in the corporate world, first with M&M/Mars, then with Marriott International. But she, too, couldn’t quell the inner voices tugging her in another direction.

That’s not unusual. Forbes.com reported in April of this year that half of all Americans are actively considering a career change.

But this was more than taking a new job. This was the maturation of a Franciscan seed planted in Pulaski and Snyder when they first roamed the SBU campus as students. These inner messengers were calling them back home, back to Bona’s.

Today, they live and work with three friars as core members of Mt. Irenaeus, the Franciscan community established by SBU friars on a mountaintop in nearby Allegany County more than 40 years ago.

A career change? More like stepping off a cliff.

“It was really scary,” Pulaski admits. “I’m a planner by nature; I always have my goals and individual steps for reaching them. This was the first time in my life that I kind of jumped off the edge with no plan at all. But I felt if I didn’t slow down, take a little bit of space in my life, I was never going to hear what God was calling me to do.”

So she took the leap of faith. Snyder, too. And their landings in the friendly and familiar community known as “the Mountain” couldn’t have been more rewarding. [Related story – Life as a Mountain Companion] 

A NATIVE OF OXFORD, New York, a small village northeast of Binghamton, Pulaski arrived on campus as a freshman in 1980. “And, of course, as was the case with many new students, one of the very first people I met was Fr. Dan,” she said.

The late Fr. Dan Riley, o.f.m., one of the most beloved friars in SBU history, was known for his kindness, comforting presence, and an uncanny ability to remember every student he met, most by name. He was ever present as each year’s crop of wide-eyed freshmen adjusted to life with strangers in a new world.

Fr. Dan invited Pulaski to join other students in a retreat that very first weekend.

“Quite honestly, I wanted no part of it,” Pulaski said. Raised in a small, conservative parish, she knew nothing about the Franciscans and their commitment to fraternity and fellowship.

“It just wasn’t part of my Catholic world, so I was a bit put off and kind of uncomfortable,” Pulaski said. “I thought, Oh God! I don’t want any part of this. How do I get rid of this guy? And he, being Fr. Dan, just kept talking to me. I finally realized he wasn’t going to give up, so I went on the retreat. And, of course, it changed my life.”

It was the start of a 45-year relationship with her friend and spiritual mentor. Pulaski had been among a handful of students invited by Fr. Dan to be part of the original working group that explored possible sites for the establishment of an off-campus Franciscan community. She graduated in the spring of ’84. The land on which Mt. Irenaeus sits was bought the following fall.

After graduating from SBU with degrees in Sociology and Psychology, and a minor in Philosophy, Pulaski earned a master’s degree in Occupational Therapy from Tufts University in Boston. She’d spend the next 32 years as an OT, eventually managing a 50-bed inpatient rehab center for Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“I loved what I did. It was the perfect synthesis of my Franciscan values, interests, and desire to be in some sort of service role. I thought I would do it forever, that I’d be one of those people who works until they’re 75,” Pulaski said.

But life sometimes has other plans.

Pulaski lost her husband, Kevin, to cancer in 2013. Both of his parents died in the same year. She lost her mother, for whom she’d been the primary caregiver, 15 months later, and just weeks after that, her father became ill. She’d be his primary caregiver until he passed, some four years later.

“It was a pretty challenging decade,” Pulaski said. “I was working full time, learning how to be a single parent to a 13-year-old boy, caring for my parents, and dealing with my grief and loss.” It wasn’t until her son was getting ready to go away to college that she realized she’d never taken the time to work through those emotions.

She called Fr. Dan.

“I told him I needed a place to process all of this,” Pulaski said. “And Dan said, ‘Come home, Karen, just come home.’”

She spent two weeks in “quiet retreat” at Mt. Irenaeus, meeting daily with Fr. Dan, trying to tame her restlessness.

“It kept growing stronger and stronger. I started to feel that this chapter of my life should be closing, and that if I didn’t allow it to close, I wouldn’t be open to whatever the next chapter held for me,” Pulaski said.

To “simplify” her life, she took an early retirement, sold the condo she and her son moved into after the death of her husband, and moved into a “tiny 400-square-foot house” in Greensboro, Pulaski said.

“Once I stopped working, I took three or four months for some quiet time, just trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next. I did a lot of praying and talked to Dan a fair amount. And I just kept feeling that the Mountain was where I was supposed to be.”

With her son having graduated from college and on his own, it was time to turn the page, step off the ledge. She accepted Fr. Dan’s offer to join the core community at Mt. Irenaeus and is now in her fourth year as a long-term companion.

SNYDER WAS THE product of a traditional Catholic upbringing when she arrived on campus as an 18-year-old freshman in 1986. “I’d had a whole different experience in my Catholic faith,” she said. “The first day, there was an outdoor Mass, which I didn’t even know you could do. Wasn’t that against the rules?”

She, too, quickly embraced the new Franciscan charism.

With a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication, Snyder went to work for the sales division of M&M/Mars (now Mars Inc.). She’d serve in five different roles over nine years, moving to a new city each time, and eventually land in Washington, D.C., as the company’s national trade development manager.

Ready to explore other opportunities, and armed with a list of SBU alumni living in the D.C. area that she’d received from the Alumni Office, Snyder reached out to a name on the list: Ann Rote, ’81, then brand director at Marriott International. “Ann, who is still a dear friend and adviser today, walked my resume to a hiring manager for a public relations role,” she said.

Snyder lights up when she talks about her 17 years with Marriott. Over that time, she’d serve as senior manager of public relations, director of corporate contributions, senior director of social responsibility and community engagement, and VP of corporate social responsibility.

She oversaw corporate philanthropy, and she was proud of the Marriott family’s sense of social responsibility and its commitment to helping the communities it served by creating jobs and community volunteer opportunities, supporting environmental initiatives, such as a reduced-emissions project in Brazil, setting industry standards in combatting human trafficking, and even working in Haiti with a local owner to develop a Marriott hotel as an engine for economic recovery following a devastating earthquake.

“It was a wonderful company in an amazing industry,” Snyder said. “I loved my team, and I loved the work. What I really loved is that I got to marry my Franciscan values to my career.”

And like Pulaski, Snyder couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. But like her fellow alum, as her time with Marriott neared the end of a second decade, she began to wonder if she should be doing something else.

“I wanted to take a break, kind of a reset, to redesign what I had been thinking for the rest of my career,” she said.

SNYDER LEFT Marriott for what she planned to be a one-year “mini-retirement,” time to explore her options and think things through. During that time, she served as a community volunteer, started a community garden for a local nonprofit, took art and Spanish lessons, started playing the guitar, and traveled.

One year turned to two.

Deciding it was time to dial back her busy life, “maybe do something in miniature,” in 2019, she joined a small nonprofit, the University of Maryland SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors. As director of economic empowerment, she helped the center build and provide services and opportunities for survivors of sex and labor trafficking.

Then, Snyder’s life was upended when her beloved partner, Brian, died five years ago. Her grief was only intensified by the isolation caused by the COVID pandemic.

And when her daily mail brought a brochure from Franciscan Mission Service announcing the establishment of a new daytime shelter for asylum seekers in Douglas, Arizona, she couldn’t put it down.

“I just devoured that brochure,” Snyder said. “I hung it up on the side of my bookcase. I couldn’t deny the call. It felt like God was revealing a path for me.”

She committed to serve for two years as a lay missioner. Working mostly in Mexico, she provided humanitarian relief to deported migrants. She also helped set up an around-the-clock shelter on the U.S. side of the border, at a Catholic parish in Douglas.

“We’re a nation of immigrants, and I have an appreciation for what immigrants bring to this country,” Snyder said. “I believe our diversity is a gift.”

When it came time to commit to another two-year assignment, she hit the pause button. Should she recommit? She didn’t know, but like Pulaski, she knew where to go to help find the answer. She went to the Mountain for a week last spring.

Snyder was no stranger to Mt. Irenaeus. She’d been present for the raising of the main beam for the grounds’ Holy Peace Chapel, returned periodically for visits and retreats, and even served on the Board of Trustees.

On this visit, she had the opportunity to spend time with Fr. Dan.

“On one of our chats, he described us as discoverers and explorers,” Snyder said. “And when, over dinner with the community, I described my discernment travels since serving at the border as nomading, Dan corrected me. ‘Mari,’ he said, ‘you’re a Franciscan, you’re an itinerant!’”

Snyder said it was while she and Pulaski were chatting on the porch on The Mountain’s House of Peace that Pulaski asked her if it wasn’t time for Snyder, too, to “come home.”

She’s now in her first year as a long-term Mountain companion, joining Pulaski as part of the Mt. Irenaeus core community.

She sees new meaning in the turns her life has taken.

“I hadn’t intended to go back into volunteer service, but as I often share with students, ‘Never underestimate the power of an invitation,” Snyder said. “Looking back, I now know that I was hearing a calling of a different sort. I can see the thread of the Franciscans running through my life.”

(Tom Donahue, ’76, retired in 2024 from St. Bonaventure as the website content manager.)