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Alumni Profiles
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Calvin seeks to equip students to think deeply, act justly, and live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world. These stories demonstrate how our alumni are living out that mission.
The integration of faith and learning is what excited Christine Metzger about Calvin. That foundation is also what has kept her in the education field for more than three decades, most recently as head of school at Lexington Christian Academy in Massachusetts.
Peter Kiemel has spent his career analyzing the former Soviet Union and Eurasia. In a variety of roles with the CIA, he has briefed U.S. leaders on some of the nation’s most pressing national security concerns. As an assistant United States attorney for the Justice Department, Austin Hakes has dealt with terrible human drama, but he is motivated by trying to make this world a better place.
Ashley Luse is passionate about using business as a tool for social good. As president of Luse Contracting Group, she feels responsible for her family’s legacy, the health of the business, and the well-being of her “work family.”
Janet Lenger Staal ’98 Christine Metzger ’89 Katelyn Ver Woert Egnatuk ’13 Evan Talen ’06 Peter Kiemel ’83
Faithfully seeking shalom
“Shalom is my word,” said Christine Metzger ’89. “I have a deep, deep passion for things to be the way they are supposed to be, the way God intended.”
It is this deep passion that has guided Metzger throughout her decades-long career in education.
Currently serving as head of school at Lexington Christian Academy in Lexington, Massachusetts, she admits the journey has been challenging, particularly over the last few years.
“It’s difficult to lead a community in which not all serious Christians agree on important topics,” she said. “In my role, I’ve been trying to hold space for conversations, knowing that not everyone holds the same convictions, but also keeping central our unity in Christ. This has been really challenging.”
Metzger stepped into her role at Lexington Christian Academy in 2017, after almost 30 years in Christian education.
INTEGRATING FAITH
“I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “Calvin was the first place where I was introduced to Christian education. I was delighted to be at Calvin where people cared about integrating faith. I was amazed at the difference when you are able to integrate faith and learning. It sparked a lifelong interest in me.” As the child of German immigrants in New York, Metzger was guided to Calvin by her father, through the Christian Reformed church plant in her neighborhood.
“My parents bought a house from a Dutch couple in Wappingers Falls, who told them about the little church down the road, Immanuel Christian Reformed Church,” she said. “As it turned out, the church was started by several Calvin alumni.
“My parents, who owned a local meat market, hired people from church who went to Calvin,” she said. “My dad was impressed by them: They were smart, they had integrity, they worked hard. That’s what my dad wanted for his kids.”
“It’s funny how my dad became one of the best promoters and recruiters for Calvin, even though he never visited campus until my graduation,” she said. “Those alums from the church spoke volumes about a Calvin education.”
COMMITTED TO EDUCATION
Upon graduating, Metzger began her career as a fourth-grade teacher at Eastern Christian School in northern New Jersey. “During my early days of teaching, the principal tapped me on the shoulder and said that I was going to be an administrator and should go to grad school,” she said. “My thought was you had to be at least 40 to be a principal; I was a 23-year-old elementary school teacher.” Nevertheless, Metzger pursued a master’s in education, and thought, “‘I’ll become an administrator once I’m old enough,’” she said.
But God had other plans, she said. After six years in the classroom, she became a principal. Her career has included principal and head of school roles around the country, including an 11-year tenure at Mustard Seed School in Hoboken, New Jersey. She has stepped away from education for a few stints—including managing a theater company on Broadway—only to be called back to education.
As a member of the Calvin board of trustees from 2008–2017, Metzger was part of the team that worked on adopting the wording of Calvin’s mission statement. “We were tweaking the last line, and I remember the deep satisfaction I had when it came together,” she said. “That word wholeheartedly speaks deeply to my soul. To live, love, and be agents of renewal, that’s the big picture.
“Over the last few years of the pandemic and political divisiveness, I have been lamenting shalom. It has been a struggle; it is a real crisis for kids, and that should concern everyone,” she said. “We should all be asking what we can do to take one step closer to what the kingdom of God is going to look like. That’s something I have been trying to do faithfully every day.”
Christine Metzger ’89 Education Head of School Lexington Christian Academy Lexington, Massachusetts
Peter Kiemel ’83 History Director The Intelligence Language Institute of the CIA Washington, D.C.
Before applying for a job with the CIA, Peter Kiemel’s knowledge of the organization was mostly what he had garnered from spy novels.
“I knew nothing about analyses at the CIA,” he said. “It wasn’t even on my radar screen.”
Following an interview with a recruiter for the agency in 1988 on the University of Illinois campus, where Kiemel was in graduate school, his career goals quickly materialized: “I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do,” he said.
“It was fortuitous that I had the right skill set and language skills for the job,” said Kiemel, who had recently spent a year studying Russian.
STRATEGIC ANALYSIS
For more than three decades, Kiemel has worked in strategic analysis, serving as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities. He has briefed presidents, vice presidents, leaders of Congress, and Senate and House committees on some of the nation’s most pressing national security concerns.
It was in Professor Dirk Jellema’s Russian history class—a long way from the floor of Congress—that Kiemel’s interest in studying the Soviet Union was piqued.
“It was during this time that Brezhnev died, and there were all these questions about the succession process and the implications of that,” said Kiemel. “I was fascinated by all of the Soviet news.” An interim trip to the United Nations with political science professor Robert DeVries solidified Kiemel’s interest in international affairs.
Kiemel has spent the majority of his career analyzing the former Soviet Union and Eurasia and eventually the Middle East and Europe, based on intelligence gathered by the agency.
“I have seen firsthand how policy is made and how things that the CIA produces impacts policy decision making,” he said. “The role of the CIA is to speak truth to power. We have no stake in the policy fights. Our role is to give realistic assessments of what is going on in the world and how decisions regarding policies would affect U.S. interests.”
Kiemel said his Calvin education definitely impacted his work. “Calvin taught me how to think about the world—that as a Christian, there isn’t just one way to think about things,” he said.
THINKING DEEPLY
“Thinking deeply is essential in intelligence analysis; you need to go beyond the obvious and think about all of the potential outcomes. That kind of thinking is exactly what is needed to succeed in intelligence analysis.” In addition, Kiemel’s faith has challenged him to delve even deeper, he said. “To love God, we need to love our neighbor, and in order to do that we need to understand our neighbor. We need to understand our neighbor’s history and culture and politics.
“It’s not just studying about Russia or the Middle East,” he said. “It’s studying with purpose to help your neighbor. It’s about advancing U.S. interests but also about how to make the world a better place.”
Following his first job as a Soviet analyst, Kiemel has held numerous leadership roles within the agency throughout his tenure. His most recent is as director of the Intelligence Language Institute, the CIA’s premier language school for training its global workforce.
Whether analyzing data on climate change, militarism abroad, autocracies, even the pandemic, Kiemel has found his work revolves around justice.
“Gathering the data and analyzing it in order to warn people about these threats and help to deter them is about advancing justice and contributing to renewal,” he said.
He added with a laugh: “I do see myself as an agent of renewal, or maybe a ‘secret agent’ of renewal in my case.”
A tool for social good
Ashley Luse ’10 has become accustomed to exchanging her heels for steel-toe boots throughout the work week as she shifts from the boardroom to the job site.
Luse is the president of Luse Contracting Group, where she is working to structure financing in order to become the fifthgeneration owner of the 99-year-old specialty contractor, a role she never envisioned for herself as a business major at Calvin.
“I came to Calvin planning on majoring in math,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my math major, but I was strong in math.”
When an interim class with then-business professor Margaret Edgell piqued Luse’s interest, she shifted her focus. “I started in business immediately after that,” she said.
“My major was something that Calvin uniquely led me to,” she said. “I was attracted to Calvin’s emphasis on using business as a tool for social good. I became interested in economic development, social enterprise, and impact investing.”
The concept drove Luse to start a new club at Calvin, Global Business Brigades, through which she and fellow club members went to Panama to consult with microbusiness owners. It also led her to Uganda to conduct research for her honors thesis. “I loved my time at Calvin, and I was nurtured and encouraged by several professors there,” she said.
After Calvin, Luse went to work in the financial industry and earned an MBA in finance at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “It just didn’t satisfy my search for deeper meaning,” she said. “I was intent on having a career that matters, that makes a difference.”
It was during her time in graduate school that an assignment changed Luse’s career journey. “I worked with a Kellogg professor to publish a case study inspired by my family’s business, which influenced my later discernment into the company,” she said.
Begun by her great-great-great uncle in 1923 as a small roofing contractor on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, Luse Contracting Group is the oldest mechanical insulation contractor in the Midwest.
In her role as president, Luse is responsible for the growth strategy and profitability of the business, which runs more than 100 union field employees on commercial and industrial construction projects across Chicagoland and southeast Wisconsin.
Central to her work has been understanding how to operationalize the company’s “Cultural Cornerstones” into the business, how to take values that are intangible and make them tangible. She explained: “Our company’s mission statement and core values—family, trust, humility, and generosity—are inspired by our faith.”
Every so often, Luse looks back on her “Worldview Paper” capstone assignment from Professor (Peter) Snyder’s “Strategic Management” course. She says that the assignment is an example of the way Calvin helped her examine the purpose of business through a Christian lens.
“The call to stewardship as a Christian has really come alive for me as the leader of this business,” she said. Luse feels a responsibility as a caretaker of her family’s legacy, the health of the business, as well as the well-being of her “work family.”
“If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be here, I admittedly might have been a little disappointed,” she said. “I thought that to use business for the greatest good, I had to go to extremes. But all along Calvin was preparing me for this very role. I’m certain that if I tried searching the world for satisfying work, I would probably never find anything as satisfying as what I am doing right here.”
Ashley Luse ’10 Business and mathematics President Luse Contracting Group Aurora, Illinois
Austin Hakes ’08 Philosophy, history, classical studies Assistant U.S. attorney U.S. Department of Justice Grand Rapids, Michigan
Perspective to do hard things
Growing up as the child of missionary parents in Kenya, attending boarding school, and returning to the U.S. to attend high school, Austin Hakes was ready to find a place to call home.
He found it just down the road from his high school in west Michigan: Calvin University.
“A lot of kids felt like they wanted to go somewhere after high school, do something adventurous,” said Hakes. “I was the opposite. I wanted to find a place that I could say I was from.”
Calvin fit the bill in more ways than one for Hakes: “It was the tradition I was raised in, which is an excellent reason in itself, but I also wanted a school that felt academically rigorous.”
DEEP ROOTS
After a year of putting down deeper roots in west Michigan, Hakes joined the U.S. Army reserves, mostly for practical reasons, he explained.
“I was the son of missionary parents, and they weren’t able to help me much financially, so I needed to figure out a way to pay for my education,” he said. “I also really wanted to marry my high school girlfriend, and I needed to become financially independent.” (It worked! They’re still together.) Hakes said it was amazing the way his academic education and military education coincided. “I took my books to study on the weekends and would read when I had down time at the firing range. There is nothing like reading philosophy when you’re in the mud,” he said. “It makes you really question the wisdom of what you are reading.”
After graduation, he was called into active duty during the Iraq War. While stationed in Kuwait, Hakes applied to law school and was accepted at the University of Michigan.
Upon graduating cum laude, he felt as though he still owed a debt to the military.
GIVING BACK MORE
“I made it back from my deployment with no injuries, psychologically or otherwise, and for a lot of others this simply wasn’t true,” he said. “I felt like I needed to give back more.”
Hakes joined the Marines, following in the footsteps of his grandfather. “I knew I wanted to be a criminal trial litigator, and this offered some great experience along with the ability to pay the debt of service I still owed.”
Hakes served for four years in Hawaii as a judge advocate officer before returning to Grand Rapids, where he currently serves as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Justice Department. “I do not think I could have had a better education for the way my life unfolded,” said Hakes. “Calvin prepared me practically to succeed in law school; I was taught to read and understand hard things.
“But that was the least important thing Calvin gave me,” he said. “Augustine and Aquinas got it right when they said education is about nurturing appetites. My Calvin education strengthened my love for the things moth and rust can’t destroy. It helped me trust that a love of virtue is one of the best defenses against despair and one of the best allies when facing hardship.
“Calvin gave me a worldview that has been such an encouragement to me when I’ve had to do hard things,” he said.
As a criminal litigator, Hakes has seen a lot of sad stories. “Narcotics, firearms, child exploitation—these are hard things,” he said, “and you need some perspective on the world that helps you endure and not be overwhelmed.
“At Calvin I learned about total depravity, but I also learned about common grace,” he said. “I look at situations and figure that there’s got to be a way to find good in this. A lot of people don’t work from the same perspective. Sometimes, I’m involved in some awful human drama, but I’m motivated by trying to make this world a better place.”
