An associate director for the Kohler Company, Sara Barron ’07 owes her career growth to her strong Catholic education, including a business degree from St. Norbert College. Although she had a strong high school GPA, she was the oldest of 11 children living on a modest Wisconsin dairy farm; therefore, her college experience was only made possible through the generous financial assistance she received from donors.
“I was in the business program, and thanks to the professors I was fortunate to have, those courses prepared me well for my first job out of college. There was an emphasis on self-leadership that each student had to exhibit to make it through. After you complete school, and you get into your career, there's no one there to hold your hand,” she says.
Now, Barron sees it as her responsibility to pay it forward through annual gifts that she began in 2009. She says, “If someone hadn't taken the time or put aside a monetary amount every year, I probably would not be where I am today. I owe my career to the education I received at St. Norbert and am blessed with the life I have due to the experiences the college provided me. I’m Catholic, was raised Catholic and I married a Catholic. My husband and I were married on campus at Old Saint Joseph Church, and our children currently attend a Catholic school in the town we live in. I had the opportunity to experience Catholic college life. I wouldn't have been able to do that without scholarships and grants through financial support.”
She reads the updates in the St. Norbert College Magazine and enjoys calls from the alumni office. Those little things remind her of the small, tight-knit campus she adores: “The wealth of experiences in campus life and the curriculum was great, and the faith-based piece really makes St. Norbert’s approach to education a holistic one that I hope all current students enjoy and appreciate.”
