By: Dezaray Barr
On most Monday nights, you can walk into any girls dorm on Indiana Wesleyan University’s (IWU) campus and find a pod of young women giggling at the TV or scrolling through their phone during commercials.
What’s so special about Monday nights? The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, of course!
While IWU students may follow these Bachelor celebrities on Instagram and watch them from the cozy lobbies of their dorms, Maddie Short, an IWU alum, gets to work with these very people every day.
Short graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) in 2017 with a degree in strategic communications from the IWU Division of Communication & Theatre.
Luckily, IWU connections never fade, even after graduation.
Short said, “In January, a fellow colleague direct messaged me an Instagram post about an organization that needed a videographer to go on a trip in a couple of weeks. I was on a break at work when she sent me the post, and only had 15 minutes, so I figured, what the heck, and emailed them my website link. A couple days later I received an email telling me I had moved on in the selection process for the trip!”
Short continued, “I ended up getting the position to go on the trip to Honduras and went down a couple of weeks later to do video for both Humanity and Hope United and Generous Coffee. My experience on the trip caused me to come back with a heart to serve. I offered up my time for volunteering, and one thing led to another.”
Ben Higgins, a previous contestant on The Bachelor franchise, is the Founder and President of Generous Coffee.
He ended up offering Short a job as the first employee of Generous Coffee — which she was not expecting at all!
She said, “I quit all my other jobs to work full-time for them.”
Generous Coffee is a for-purpose business that aims to make the world better with every business decision. They do this by selling products that are designed specifically to create and multiply good in the world.
Although Generous Coffee is best known for their specialty grade coffee, they also sell shirts, bracelets and necklaces. They then invest 100% of their profits back into non-profits and other social causes.
Whether it is creating jobs for parents, feeding children or improving education, Generous Coffee wants to create a world we all want to live in, because they believe in the unique value of every human being. The Humanity and Hope United Foundation fits into this, because right now they are the main beneficiary of Generous Coffee, where all the profits go back to.
Short explained that this position working with such influential people wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for her education at IWU.
“I found out later that there were over 350 people who applied to do video/photo on the trip,” Short said. “One of the reasons I was considered for the trip that led me to my current job, was because I had an actual website with actual work on it. I would not have had that website if it wasn’t for my senior communication seminar class with Dr. Mark Perry.”
There is one more thing Short would like to add, and she hopes every current and future IWU student reads this. “When I graduated, I had someone say to me, ‘How does it feel that you just completed the best four years of your life?’ And it was such a weird question to be asked. I didn’t understand why they assumed upon graduating, that everything I had experienced over the last four years at IWU wouldn’t amount to anything, or suddenly because I am not tangibly at a place, that I can no longer experience my ‘best days.’ They were wrong. I think each day from here on out is considered my best day. It is one day more that I meet new people. One day more where I learn something new. One day more that I have an opportunity to serve. One day more that I have the chance to impact and be impacted. So, to all the seniors out there – It is what you make of it. And it is up to you to find the hope in the biggest setbacks and it is up to you to find the joy in the smallest of victories.”
Written by Dezaray Barr, PR Specialist for the IWU Alumni Office. Dezaray is a senior Strategic Communication, Journalism and Honors Humanities triple major at Indiana Wesleyan University in the John Wesley Honors College. Visit Dez’s website at www.dezaraybarr.weebly.com.
