2022 Young Alumni Award

Holly (Nickerson) Lynn ’15

The war in Ukraine hits closer to homefor Holly (Nickerson) Lynn than for most Americans. The 2015 SNC grad has spent the better part of her adult life supporting Ukrainian residents either in person as a member of the Peace Corps or remotely from stateside locations. She credits her community commitment to her undergraduate experiences with communio.

Holly initially planned to serve Ukraine as a youth development volunteer through the Peace Corps upon her graduation. However, Russia’s invasion of Donbass and Crimea in 2014 put those plans on hold. In the interim,
Holly dedicated her efforts to several nonprofits in northwestern Wisconsin before returning to the Green Bay area as a youth development specialist and volunteer development coordinator for the Greater Green Bay YMCA.

In 2017, the situation in Ukraine had stabilized to the point where Holly could fulfill her dream of Peace Corps service. After three months of training, she was placed in a small village in the western part of the country, where she helped create adventure- and therapy-based sessions at a camp for children who came from unstable home lives.

Holly’s next stop was at a regional center in Western Ukraine, where she worked with the director for The Administration of Education, Youth and Sports. She went from school to school, teaching a variety of techniques for English teachers and school administrators. She also led youth and adult English lessons, and co-directed four nationwide leadership-based camps with her Ukrainian counterparts.

The COVID outbreak in March of 2020 led to a return to the U.S., where Holly then focused on completing an accelerated graduate program in nonprofit leadership at the University of Pennsylvania. Soon afterward, she took a position at Princeton-Blairstown Center, a New Jersey-based nonprofit affiliated with Princeton University that provides adventure-based, experiential education to historically marginalized youth.

Holly says youth development work fulfills, sustains, challenges and inspires her, and she is grateful for the strong support she enjoyed from the St. Norbert community in forging her own path toward this vocation.

Early in 2022, Holly joined forces with other Returned Peace Corps Volunteers to mobilize information, transportation and donations for individuals and families in Ukraine who needed support in and beyond the war-torn country. A donation drive through Amazon amassed more than 1,000 donors and tens of thousands of items. Today the team has a new focus: compiling individual first aid kits for direct delivery to Ukraine on passenger flights.

For her embodiment of communio and deep commitment to community building, we are pleased to honor Holly Lynn with the Young Alumni Award.