dennis BEALE

Dennis graduated with his master’s degree from UWEC and worked for the university that helped shift and nurture his outlook on the life and world ahead of him, working in the recruitment and retention of minority students. It was through that position Dennis would found the Black Male Empowerment organization at the school, igniting his passion for connecting with youth who just needed someone in their corner, the way Dennis’ mentors at UWEC had been for him.

Working for years at the university only deepened the roots he had begun putting down in the Chippewa Valley. His career, too, continued to grow and after four years working at UWEC, he moved to Minnesota. That chapter of his life overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the growing conflicts across the nation and in Minnesota.

“When I moved to Minnesota, I was there at the heart of everything that was going on with COVID and George Floyd,” Dennis recalled. “I’ll be honest with you: Eau Claire has been a good place to raise children. I’ve got three babies – a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a 10-month-old – I just wanted a safe place for them.”

“I remember telling my wife, ‘I think I gotta get back, I just don’t think my time in Eau Claire is done yet. I feel like I still got more to give,’” he said. Since moving back to the Chippewa Valley with his wife and children, Dennis has been full-steam ahead, creating and opening more and more doors of opportunity for the youth part of Power of Perception and throughout the community. He isn’t the type of person who relies on a kick of caffeine in the morning or afternoon or needs to reach for motivation. His reason for “why” is simple: to change lives.

“My life motto is, ‘to change lives daily,’ and that’s what I live by,” he said. “I do it through conversation, through my presence, my advice; I love to help people and see people get to where they’re trying to go. One of the biggest things, and one of the other things I live by – especially through Power of Perception – is that in order to create change, you must create opportunity.”

And creating opportunity is what he continues to do. He recently solidified one of his biggest dreams for Power of Perception – taking some of the mentee youth on an out-of-country trip. Now, that trip has been funded thanks to a $150,000 grant from the Pablo Foundation. Next summer, Power of Perception will be taking 15 of the mentoring group’s youth on a two-week trip to South Africa. For many of the kids, it will be there their first time traveling out of the country.

“I want my legacy to be about this hard work; my dedication and passion for our world,” Dennis said. “If I was to die tomorrow, I just want people to understand how much effort, dedication, and passion I put behind every single day.”

Dr. Tom Sather, a professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at UW-Eau Claire and a medical professional at Mayo Clinic Health Systems, focuses his talent and energy on helping facilitate authentic, meaningful communication among people dealing with serious challenges.

Among other things, Dr. Sather helps lead groups and camps for those with aphasia, or the loss of the ability to communicate. He also helped bring Reel Recovery, a program for men living with cancer, to the Chippewa Valley.

Dr. Tom Sather is a natural communicator. In conversation, he is articulate, personable, and passionate about his career and community involvement. But his biggest passion isn’t communicating his own message: It’s creating authentic opportunities for other community members to engage in meaningful communication, make human connections, and increase their wellbeing.

Professionally, Sather has several roles including that of associate professor in the Communications Sciences and Disorders Department at UW-Eau Claire (where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees) and speech pathologist at Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire. Yet his impact on the community goes far beyond his professional work, as important and as it is.

Throughout his career, Sather has worked with individuals who have aphasia, a language condition that may occur because of a stroke or other damage to the area of the brain that controls language. “Language is affected, but cognition, intellect, and memory remain intact, so it creates this unique situation where somebody knows what they want to say, but can’t always say it,” he said. While a stroke is often the cause of aphasia, the condition can also be the result of a degenerative condition known as primary progressive aphasia. In these cases, Sather said, what begins as a mild difficulty with language progresses to impact more parts of the brain, eventually impacting cognition and memory.

“Frustration is certainly one of the primary things that people with aphasia report, as well as their care partners and family,” he said. “Communication is fundamental to what a lot of us do, and so having that impacted can have catastrophic results.”

Sather’s interest in facilitating that communication through multiple means has led him to be heavily involved in the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Group, which was founded in 1997 by two of his mentors and fellow speech pathologists, Mary Beth Clark and Tom Hintgen.

“I did some volunteer work and some clinical experiences where I sat at kitchen tables with people with aphasia and did things in the community with people with aphasia, and that gave me a broader perspective of not just the hospital room, but also the community lived experience as well,” he said.

Sather describes the aphasia group as ahead of its