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Suzanne Scheuble, founder of a home for abandoned and orphaned children in Ethiopia, will deliver the keynote address at commencement on May 11, 2019.
This will be her second visit to campus as an invited speaker. Shortly after opening Lantu’s Home of Hidden Treasures in 2015, Scheuble addressed participants in the President’s Leadership Program. It was a speech so compelling and memorable that the university invited her to return.
“Our graduates will be sent into the world with their hearts on fire, ready to lead lives of significance,” said President Paul Trible. “Suzanne is only 22 and yet she has already done so much for our world’s most vulnerable children. We are honored that she is returning to Christopher Newport from Ethiopia, and we eagerly await her message of what can be accomplished with hope, faith and abundant love.”
Scheuble was inspired by a visit to Ethiopia as a teenager where she witnessed abandoned babies, people dying of AIDS, and children suffering from starvation and tuberculosis. After earning a bachelor’s degree in child psychology in only two years at the University of North Florida, she consulted with pediatricians and child psychologists and raised funds to develop the first specialized care home for children in Ethiopia.
Scheuble now serves as the founder and executive director of Netsanet Ministries. It operates two specialized care homes for orphaned and special needs children, a community sponsorship program providing school materials, clothing, food and medical care for over 500 impoverished children per year, a women’s empowerment and training program and a special needs sponsorship program that provides wheelchairs and medical supplies.
Scheuble, the daughter of CNU alumnus Dan Scheuble (‘81), will address more than 10,000 graduates, families and friends on the Great Lawn. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. and will be broadcast live on cnu.edu.