Alumna volunteer leader knows ‘There’s no place like home’

Sometimes you have to stray from the path that life has prepared for you in order to learn and fully appreciate where your destiny lies.

Ruthie Keefe chairs the University of Cincinnati Foundation’s Alumni Association Committee, which provides guidance and advocacy for the UC Alumni Association, its outreach efforts and annual giving program.

Being a twin plays a significant role in Keefe’s story of service. Upon graduation from Saint Ursula Academy less than two miles east of the UC campus, she felt the onset of college and looming adulthood presented the right time to chart her own path and “separate” from her sister; Lelia had chosen to stay home and go to UC, so Keefe opted for the University of Dayton. Yet she soon realized, as Dorothy Gale famously once did, that there’s no place like home.

“At winter break of my first year, Lelia and I sat down in Tangeman University Center and made up a list of pros and cons for my coming to UC,” Keefe recalls. “After we all looked at it, my father called Nancy Hamant, who oversaw the School of Education, and asked if there was any way I could transfer the next quarter. I never went back to Dayton. But I didn’t understand at the time how big that decision would be.”

Indeed, it would pay off massively for both Keefe and UC. She feels she largely owes her successful career in the marketing and software development fields to her particular UC experience which, like her college choice process, hasn’t been a straight line from Point A to Point B.

“I’m a teacher by education, and I taught until I had children, but as much as the education was important, primarily what I learned and gathered at UC was lifelong friendships and connections,” Keefe says. “I always say that my high school was a huge developer of character, and on top of that, UC provided the path from education to professional success. I learned the necessity of communication and authenticity.”

Not long after, Keefe was asked to become involved with what was then known as the Distinguished Alumni Celebration, now the UC Alumni Celebration. It became her tipping point in terms of being happily and completely engulfed in service toward UC’s alumni engagement and advancement. And Keefe’s fellow Bearcats are the reason for her fulfillment.

The UC Alumni Celebration annually recognizes a slate of alumni honorees for their professional achievements and dedication to their alma mater. Even as Keefe has cherished getting to know people within the wide circle created by her volunteerism, her work with this signature event has exposed her to waves of accomplished Bearcats she’d never known about. In that first year (2013), the recipient of the UC Alumni Association’s highest honor, the William Howard Taft Medal, was Dr. Joseph Broderick, the world-renowned pioneer of innovative stroke treatment who is currently a professor of neurology at UC and director of the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute. And as luck would have it, that year’s recipient of the Distinguished Service Award, emblematic of outstanding commitment to the university, was Bill Keating, Jr. (Keefe’s mother had received the same honor 30 years earlier.)

“There were people ‘ahead of me’ that were so accomplished who I had never connected with. So not only has it been fun doing and growing the event, but it’s allowed me to meet and celebrate the incredible Bearcat alumni I never would have met otherwise. And organizationally, we’ve become good at acknowledging the greatness among our alumni family.”

The experience has underscored a truth Keefe has fully realized over her years of involvement: Whether they’re receiving a big award, toiling behind the scenes or just going about their business, “there’s a thread of authenticity among UC alumni … You can be who you are, and we love you for it!”

“Jerry Fritz and I recently spoke at the UC Alumni Association’s Network Leaders Conference at Homecoming,” Ruthie says. “I looked around that room of volunteer leaders and thought how incredibly blessed we are to have such authentic people so involved, and for all the right reasons.”

“I hope that part of my legacy in this role will be helping to find and develop a place we can call our home again,” she says. “And it isn’t just about the brick and mortar. It’s important that the UC Alumni Association has a home that can share the history, the tremendous accomplishments of the university, and a sense of what it means to be a Bearcat — and you need some brick and mortar to do that. It’s four walls, yes, but it’s more about the story we can tell there and the way it will draw the UC family closer together.”

This story is part of a series of profiles of members of the University of Cincinnati Foundation’s Alumni Association Committee, composed of volunteers who help guide the work of the UC Alumni Association within the framework of the Foundation’s larger advancement efforts on behalf of the UC community.