Nonprofits/Philanthropy: SISTER DONNA MARKHAM

In June 2015, when Markham was named the first female president in Catholic Charities USA’s 100-year-plus history, she said: “There can be no greater call than to serve and advocate on behalf of persons who struggle to get by in a world where they are all too frequently relegated to the margins of society and where they long for dignity, hope and compassion.”

With 167 agencies across the country, Catholic Charities is the nation’s largest private network of social service organizations and the largest U.S. social safety net provider outside the federal government.

In 2020, Catholic Charities helped almost 180,000 people access stable and affordable housing, provided homelessness-related services to over 403,000 individuals, and operated more than 37,000 units of permanent housing, according to Markham, who in February provided written testimony about the challenges of serving people experiencing homelessness to a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on housing, community development and insurance.

An Adrian Dominican sister, Markham is a board-certified clinical psychologist with a doctorate from the University of Detroit Mercy. She received the Harold S. Bernard Group Psychotherapy Training Award from the American Group Psychotherapy Association in 2014.