The Center for L.I.F.E. Catches Up with Claire Dougherty, Miami University, Class of ‘21
Claire wasn’t planning on starting a podcast after college, but she couldn’t resist the idea of building something to help others like her.
Growing up, Claire had always admired her dad’s entrepreneurial career, replicating his endeavors by selling lemonade, cookies, brownies, and more than a few household items. “I loved selling,” Claire explained. “When we had garage sales in the neighborhood, I put sales stickers on stuff we were still using at the house. My mom would protest, but I told her we could make $20!”
As with many of our early ambitions, Claire’s entrepreneurial drive tempered over time, gravitating more toward analytical work rather than creative projects. But Claire’s time at Miami University in the Farmer School of Business brought those dreams back to the foreground. As part of the first year curriculum, Claire took several introductory business courses, and was immediately drawn to entrepreneurship.
“I thought it was the most challenging course, but it really intrigued me, and I wanted to be better at it,” Claire said. “I admired those entrepreneurial qualities in someone.” Claire eventually incorporated entrepreneurship as a co-major. “It was the best part of my college experience,” Claire shared.
But a love of entrepreneurship wasn’t the only passion that Claire rediscovered during college. While faith had always been an important part of her life, she connected with resources available through Miami and spent her college years deepening her Catholic faith and reclaiming many of its traditions. This renewed faith proved essential when Covid turned the world–and Claire’s college experience–upside down in early 2020.
“Everyone struggled in different ways during Covid, and I took that opportunity to make faith a deeper part of my life,” Claire said. “It was really a beautiful time in my life. I think the Lord was preparing me and giving me the tools to not only leave college and sustain myself out of school, but also share my faith with others.
Part of that spiritual and professional preparation was due in large part to the L.I.F.E. (Leading the Integration of Faith and Entrepreneurship) class, offered for the first time during the last semester of Claire’s final year in college. “I was always looking at the different courses that were offered each semester [in the business school],” Claire explained. “Faith had become a big part of my life in college, so I thought taking the L.I.F.E. course was a no-brainer.”
Claire credits the course with reframing much of her thinking around faith and work, and for providing practical tools to navigate post-college life. “I had never thought about working a 9-to-5 job and how faith might play into that,” Claire said. “I had just dreaded the idea of work my entire life. But one of the first classes of the L.I.F.E. course studied Genesis where God says that work is good, and that completely changed my entire perspective on work. I thought that work was a punishment that I would have to do for 40 years, and it was something that I would have to get through and find joy in other areas of my life.”
“That perspective and the class broadly helped me be more proactive pursuing opportunities after college,” Claire explained. “I graduated and moved to Chicago and I was energized and excited to see where the Lord would take me.”
In that time, Claire has found a way to explore the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship through both personal and professional endeavors. After starting her career in healthcare consulting, a friend encouraged Claire to start a podcast, Corporate Catholic, based largely around the ideas she learned in the L.I.F.E. course. She hopes that the podcast fills a gap for people like her in faith communities who wonder whether their work has any significant or eternal meaning.
“Our audience is early career professionals who may not know what their life is going to look like after college, and they’re wrestling with questions like “Where does God fit into my work?” “What is my purpose?” ” Claire shared. “We knew that these people existed, and we knew that in many faith communities, corporate work isn’t celebrated.”
Over the past two years, the Corporate Catholic podcast has reached thousands of listeners through 55 shows (and counting). Many of the episodes incorporate themes directly from the L.I.F.E. course, like calling, purpose, and identity, and include real-world examples from guests living out their faith through work and entrepreneurship.
“I owe everything to the L.I.F.E. course,” Claire said about the podcast. “We get messages from listeners about episodes that impacted them, and I explain that the LIFE course was the catalyst for it all!.”
