Name and pronouns: Lib Gatti (they/them)
Cohort year: 2015-2016
Where are you living now? Mission Hill, Boston MA
What are you doing now?
After working as a chaplain with my Life Together placement site (The MANNA Community, at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul) for five years, I transitioned into various public health roles. First, with Partners in Health during the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis, and then Fenway Health, at their Drug User Health Program needle exchange site in Cambridge. I learned to adapt my leadership and chaplaincy skills to a healthcare setting, and was able to keep working with the communities that I love. I took a few months off this spring to rest and support a family member experiencing some deep grief, and just this week I have started a new job as the Manager of Wellness Programs for the New England Culinary Art School. I will be developing and implementing curriculum and programming centered on student wellness, as well as helping the school become more trauma-informed in its approaches to learning and student care. I am extremely excited to be bridging my love for people, community care, and amazing food into what feels like a dream job!
How has LT impacted your life?
In so many ways! Life Together gave me concrete skills, as well as a network of relationships, that have made my success as a leader possible. Since completing the fellowship in 2016, I have lived in community with friends from Life Together and used many of the tools we were trained in at every job I have had. Working at MANNA completely changed the trajectory of my career, empowering me to go to divinity school and enter the Postulancy for Holy Orders with the Episcopal Church. Both my placement site at MANNA and the monthly trainings with Life Together laid an organized, spiritually grounded, and relationally resourced foundation for my career, and set me on a path to do powerful work rooted in community and oriented around justice. To this day, I reach for the LT network when I am trying to solve complicated problems at work, when I am facing a spiritually challenging situation, or when someone in my community is in need. In so many ways, I am who I am (and where I am!) today thanks to Life Together.