The Leadership Roundtable’s “Profiles in Excellence,” highlight people who are committed to best practices for the betterment of the Church’s temporal affairs. These Profiles are intended to inspire hope for and confidence in the best that the Church has to offer. Carolyn Woo is the president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Prior to CRS, Carolyn Woo was the dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. She has a sterling reputation for best practices and excellence in her work, and we are honored to call her a friend and Council Member of the Leadership Roundtable.
Carolyn Woo’s commitment to excellence is not only a critical responsibility of her position as president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, it is also a personal commitment, reinforced by her spiritual encounters – and Woo can identify who planted the seed in her. “When I was at Notre Dame, I met Fr. Theodore Hesburgh my first week. He taught me two lessons which I never forgot, which became part of my daily practice. Firstly, mediocrity is not the way we serve the Blessed Mother. Notre Dame is named for the Blessed Mother; Mediocrity is not the way that we serve the Church.” A practiced hand at theology, she delved into the Old Testament roots of this theory, where the Jewish people brought their purest animals and ripest fruit as sacrifice to the temple. “It’s the whole idea that we give our very best to God. When we do anything in the name of God, we need to bring our very best.” The very best, she underscores, does not equate solely to working hard. It also must include intelligence, inventiveness, and improvement. According to Woo, knowing where something can be done more effectively, admitting a need for change, and possessing a willingness to implement are crucial in service to the Church.
This sense of giving one’s best also induces credibility: “We evangelize when we love the message, but if we do so in a mediocre manner, then our evangelization is not credible.” She saw this particularly at the University of Notre Dame, as the dean of a business school at a Catholic institution: “If we were ineffective, people would say ‘oh, they’re nice people and all, but their model doesn’t work in the world.’ We have to demonstrate that our model does work in the world, that it’s a model of sustainable success… That’s why when Mendoza became #1, it wasn’t a feeling of running a race and winning. It was a feeling that this is our message about life and how it should work. You can honor God in work and succeed.” Woo sees the value in the Leadership Roundtable’s work in its capacity to provide training for parish, diocesan, and archdiocesan leaders and staff to make use of the tools which are readily available to them. Doing so increases the professionalism of the work of the Church, which allows it to serve more people and do it well and reduce possible risk in the best way possible, by operating under and striving for a standard of excellence. She cites Deus Caritas Est, in which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI reminds the reader that “if we assume the work of the Church, it is imperative that we are well trained and qualified, that our work is professional, and that we seek improvement in how we do it,” a service which she sees the Leadership Roundtable provide. One question Woo herself posited: “Would the Church’s services continue without the Leadership Roundtable to make it better? Perhaps, but not as extensively. Success requires ability to sustain your work. If you cannot align your work with where the needs are, and it’s inefficient and you don’t use resources well, you’re not sustainable.” The Leadership Roundtable, she believes, keeps the work of the Church sustainable through best practices. When asked what the second lesson of Fr. Hesburgh was, Woo smiled. “He taught me that there is no occasion when it is not appropriate to call on the Holy Spirit.” Interview by Nicole Perone.