{"id":59621,"date":"2025-09-22T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T11:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=59621"},"modified":"2025-09-04T10:54:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:54:00","slug":"alumni-awards-civic-leader-jessica-king-96-receives-distinguished-service-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/alumni-awards-civic-leader-jessica-king-96-receives-distinguished-service-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Awards: Civic leader Jessica King &#8217;96\u00a0receives Distinguished Service Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>This is the second of three profiles about the recipients of EMU\u2019s 2025 Alumni Awards. For more information about the annual awards and a full list of past winners, visit\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/alumni\/awards\">emu.edu\/alumni\/awards<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JESSICA (JESS) KING &#8217;96 <\/strong>has worked to bring the foundational lessons of her Mennonite upbringing and education to others during her more than 20-year career leading equity-driven public sector organizations\u2014from creating economic opportunity to facilitating transparency in government to building journalistic literacy in communities. In recognition of her work, Eastern Mennonite University\u2019s Alumni Association and its Awards and Nominations Committee have selected King as the recipient of the 2025 Distinguished Service Award, which honors alumni who have significantly impacted the lives of others.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to be recognized by my alma mater,\u201d said King, who graduated from EMU with a bachelor\u2019s degree in liberal arts with minors in English, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and psychology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Service lights the way<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>After graduation, King volunteered with Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service (PULSE), founded by EMU alumnus <strong>John Stahl-Wert &#8217;81<\/strong>. In an experience she likened to a post-graduate program, King joined a community of young leaders to partner with Pittsburgh nonprofits for a year of service and leadership. She served at the Thomas Merton Center, a Catholic-founded center for peace and justice, and was later hired as executive director of PULSE, where she spent four years expanding her understanding of urban communities and the local businesses, organizations, and governments that serve them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>King then led a six-year effort as founding executive director of the Union Project to transform an abandoned church building into an arts and enterprise incubator space. She spent more than a decade in Pittsburgh, where she met her husband, Chad. The couple has two daughters, Eleni and <strong>Esm\u00e9 King Martin<\/strong>. Both Jessica and Esm\u00e9 were greatly impacted by their intercultural studies at EMU; Jessica studied in Greece and lived with families in France and C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire (West Africa), while Esm\u00e9, a rising junior at EMU, spent the spring 2025 semester in Guatemala and Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Foundations in community\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>King grew up Mennonite in Lancaster County. Her father was killed in a plane crash when she was two. After her mother remarried, her mother and stepfather started a paint store, where King and her three siblings all worked at different points.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGrowing up, my family had a robust network of support, and our church community was also an essential part of our local economy,\u201d King said. \u201cConnections are important for a prosperous community.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>King has intentionally lived in low-income neighborhoods for much of her adult life, creating relationships and solidarity that have informed her work and career path\u2014from Pittsburgh to Lancaster, where she fought poverty through entrepreneurship for seven years as executive director at ASSETS; ran for Pennsylvania\u2019s 11th Congressional District; and served four \u201ceye-opening\u201d years as chief of staff for the City of Lancaster.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a narrative that our situations in life are based on our choices, but generational trauma and poverty, oppression based on race or gender, and access to quality education are huge factors. The rules of our economy are created by the wealthy and well-connected, creating systems of opportunity and disinvestment that are so much more than choice,\u201d said King.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She says that Jesus teaches us about economic issues more than many other Christian themes. \u201cLoving our neighbors as ourselves includes examining and changing socioeconomic systems that support people,\u201d she said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since September 2023, King has served as inaugural executive director of <a href=\"https:\/\/steinmaninstitute.org\/\">The Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement<\/a> in Lancaster. The nonprofit is focused on funding innovation in local news to support informed and engaged communities. It is also working \u201cupstream from news\u201d to build trust, center solutions, and equip action.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>King says her recent work reminds her of the conflict transformation teachings at EMU, including those taught by <strong>John Paul Lederach<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cChange is possible,\u201d said King. \u201cWe can choose not to participate in the dystopian fears that can paralyze and isolate us. Values, teachings, and examples from EMU and the broader world provide guideposts and road maps to other ways forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>King will share her story at EMU TenTalks, held on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 1:30 p.m. in Martin Chapel during Homecoming 2025. For a full schedule of Homecoming events and activities, visit\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/homecoming\/\"><strong>emu.edu\/homecoming<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second of three profiles about the recipients of EMU\u2019s 2025 Alumni Awards. For more information about the annual awards and a full list of past winners, visit\u00a0emu.edu\/alumni\/awards. <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/alumni-awards-civic-leader-jessica-king-96-receives-distinguished-service-award\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about Alumni Awards: Civic leader Jessica King &#8217;96\u00a0receives Distinguished Service Award<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":302,"featured_media":59623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,17562,60,5597,5730],"tags":[5753,18145,6794,17214,18543,11533],"feature":[17427,17426,17241,17422],"class_list":["post-59621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-digest","category-homecoming","category-liberal-arts","category-undergraduate-programs","tag-alumni","tag-alumni-awards","tag-distinguished-service-award","tag-homecoming","tag-jessica-king","tag-liberal-arts","feature-emu-home-page-feature","feature-myemu-feature","feature-news-feature","feature-news-landing-page-main-feature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Alumni Awards: Civic leader Jessica King &#039;96\u00a0receives Distinguished Service Award - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2025\/alumni-awards-civic-leader-jessica-king-96-receives-distinguished-service-award\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alumni Awards: Civic leader Jessica King &#039;96\u00a0receives Distinguished Service Award - EMU News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is the second of three profiles about the recipients of EMU\u2019s 2025 Alumni Awards. 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