Answering the Call to Serve

Community Service
Tina O’Brien, ’89, ’98 MNPL
College of Arts and Sciences

For more than three decades, Tina O’Brien has lived out the Jesuit ideal of faith in action. Throughout her career as a nonprofit leader, she has been bringing people together, strengthening communities and ensuring that people and organizations leave legacies of generosity. For her lifelong commitment to service and her leadership as CEO of the Kitsap Community Foundation, O’Brien is the recipient of this year’s Community Service award.

Growing up on in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood and attending Holy Names Academy, O’Brien became the first in her blue-collar family to go to college. SU was close to home and just the right size. “I realized pretty quickly that I needed something where I could get to know people,” she says. “Seattle University felt right.”

Earning two BAs, in psychology and philosophy with a minor in communication, O’Brien found professors who encouraged curiosity and reflection. She immersed herself in campus life, eventually becoming the first woman ever elected as SU Student Body President. During that time, she met university president William J. Sullivan, S.J., who served as a mentor, friend and guide into Jesuit circles and philosophy.  

“I came from a family where this world was completely new,” she says, laughing as she recalls attending her first formal board dinner and quietly asking the president how to use all the silverware. “Father Sullivan and everyone at SU helped me learn how to move confidently in spaces I’d never imagined myself in.”

After graduating, O’Brien returned to SU for work, spending eight years in Alumni Relations. “I loved working there,” she says. “Serving is what brought me joy.” That joy became a calling, guiding her into more than 30 years of nonprofit leadership with Catholic Community Services, the Special Olympics of Washington and the Oregon Province of the Jesuits.

It was her time with the Jesuits as a development officer that O’Brien cites as most transformative in her life and career. “I learned a lot while I worked for the Oregon Province,” she says. “Not only about the nuts and bolts of fundraising, but also about how to make authentic connections.”

With great success at the regional level, eventually O’Brien was recruited by the Jesuit home office in Rome to travel around the world teaching Jesuit provinces how to fundraise, an experience she describes as both humbling and transformative, calling it “One of the most significant things I’ve done in my life.”

Spurred on by these experiences, O’Brien sought out organizations to volunteer for, especially those with an Ignatian ethos. Since her time working for the Oregon Province, O’Brien has served as board chair for the Jesuit Restorative Justice Initiative Northwest and on boards and committees for the Historic Seattle Council, Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life Puget Sound and the Ignatian Spirituality Center.

In her current role as CEO of the Kitsap Community Foundation, O’Brien helps individuals, families and organizations turn generosity into lasting impact through grants, nonprofit training and conversations about legacy and community. “It energizes me,” she says. “Who doesn’t want to talk about how to make the world a better place? I consider those conversations sacred.”

O’Brien sees her work as a continuation of everything her time at SU set in motion. “People who graduate from Seattle University have a heart for this,” she says. “That’s something special.”