WINTER 2025
New Stories of Hope
Through the Opus Prize Foundation, Dan McGinty, EdD ’18, shines a light on extraordinary humanitarians.
(Left to right) Dan McGinty, Julie Sullivan (President of Santa Clara University), Molly McDonald (Chief of Staff, Santa Clara University) and Sr. Ngozi Uti, HHCJ. Photographed for Santa Clara University by Miguel Ozuna
EVERY YEAR, the Opus Prize Foundation works with a different Catholic university to discover and honor extraordinary humanitarians, people making lasting and positive change in their communities. They celebrate leaders doing work around the world, and from many different faith traditions.
University of Portland hosted the Opus Prize in 2018, but it now has a new reason for a continued relationship with the organization. UP’s director of the Dundon-Berchtold Institute, Dan McGinty, EdD ’18, was recently named the executive director of the Opus Prize Foundation. He calls the work of the philanthropic organization “noble and holy work,” and he will continue to serve both UP and the Opus Prize.
This year, the Opus Prize ceremonies took place at Santa Clara University. The three finalists were: Sr. Ngozi Uti, HHCJ, of the Centre for Women Studies and Intervention of Nigeria, where she and her colleagues have successfully increased enrollment of girls in schools across the country and increased female representation in traditionally male-only councils; Bianca and Cătălin Albu of Jesuit Refugee Service in Romania, where the couple has aided tens of thousands of refugees, with a sharp increase in numbers since the start of the war in Ukraine; and Fr. Zach Presutti, SJ, of the Thrive for Life Prison Project in New York City, an organization that offers spiritual and educational support to those who are incarcerated and recently released from prison. Each of these three organizations received financial support from the Opus Prize Foundation to advance their work.
Another incredible opportunity that the Opus Prize offers to the host university each year is that student ambassadors get to travel to the sites of the awardees to see the work of the organizations first-hand. Dan invited two UP alums, who had traveled with the Opus Prize to India and Peru in 2018, to write letters of encouragement to the Santa Clara students who were about to embark on their own journeys. The UP alums jumped at the chance, and they both spoke about how meeting the Opus finalists has had a lasting impact on their own lives and work. There are so many unseen tendrils to the Opus Prize, and we look forward to hearing Dan McGinty’s annual updates