Liz Fehrenbach '01

Setting off after graduation, Liz Fehrenbach ‘01 had grand plans of changing the world. With a passion for helping those around her, she dove into a career focused on improving the systems in our world, first with environmental science, and then with public health and nursing. Propelled by the Jewish concept of ‘tikkun olam,’ or ‘repairing the world’, she took steps to make a difference in each of her communities.

Service became a part of Liz’s life early on, and she dedicated many Saturday mornings to forming relationships with locals and classmates as part of the KOOCS club at Kennedy Catholic. Those mornings were a great chance to learn more about her classmates and forge friendships based on deep beliefs and compassion. It emphasized the spirit and connection that Liz forever associates with Lancers. When she started college, she took the concept of making a difference in her community to a bigger picture by studying environmental science, first at Boston University and then Lewis and Clark College.

Liz was fascinated by the way we are all connected, and how trouble in one system can impact others.

Even after graduating and working in nutritional education, Liz saw these questions continue to emerge, particularly while volunteering with a local community garden. The garden was right next to public housing, and as she worked alongside other volunteers and visitors, she learned more about the struggles in their lives. Liz heard how the systems in their lives were helping or harming them, and nurses were consistently the people who had the most trust, and who had made the biggest impact.

She started to see how she could make a difference in so many lives through nursing, and shortly thereafter applied to the nursing program at Johns Hopkins, where she completed her second degree. This is how Liz found herself leading a clinic in Vermont focused on serving the homeless population. She helped improve tracking for health maintenance needs, added a multidisciplinary clinic for diabetic patients, and grew the medical outreach program to multiple sites.

A couple of years later, a move to Washington, DC for her husband’s fellowship had Liz searching for another organization to continue her impact, and she found Joseph’s House. The organization focuses on providing hospice care to the homeless, with a particular emphasis on those suffering from HIV. As a nurse here, Liz focuses on case management and helping her patients find a stable place to live after they are discharged.

Although the work can take an emotional toll, the spirit of hope and energy sustains the house and its community.

Through the many moves, and the many changes in life, Liz has remained an avid runner, a hobby picked up with great memories from her time on the Kennedy Catholic cross-country team. She is also a self-proclaimed lifelong book-devourer, a passion encouraged in former English teacher Mr. McBride’s class. When she’s not working in her community, you can find Liz unwinding with her husband Luke and their one-year-old daughter, or reading through her latest library book.