Growth has a way of quietly narrowing what a company pays attention to. As OneAscent adds team members, opens new offices, and takes on more clients, it’s easy for the calendar to fill with deliverables and leave little room for the people doing the work. A firm can say it cares about the whole person and still let that care become something everyone means to get to eventually.
That’s the gap OneAscent decided not to leave open. We created a new role, Director of People Development, built specifically around discipleship, mentoring, and chaplaincy for our own team. The person stepping into it is Sue Harris.
“At OneAscent, we want our people to flourish, and that means supporting them as whole people: mind, body, and spirit, exactly as they were created. This role exists because flourishing doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intention. Sue’s background makes her uniquely suited to walk alongside our team on that journey.” said Halston Kirkpatrick, SVP of Enterprise Services.
Sue’s job looks unlike almost anything else at OneAscent. She’ll walk alongside our team through the ordinary and hard moments: life transitions, hard weeks, questions of calling, not just onboarding and performance reviews. Think of her as part mentor, part chaplain, part encourager, someone whose job is simply to notice how people are actually doing.
Her path here didn’t run through financial services at all. Sue spent 12 years coaching college women’s basketball before trading a whistle for a different kind of calling. From 2007 to 2016, she served with Mission to the World, encouraging PCA congregations in their missions engagement and providing pastoral care, teaching, and short-term team coordination. From 2016 until this year, she led Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church’s Women’s Ministry in Birmingham and served on the church’s senior leadership team.
Along the way, she earned a bachelor’s degree from East Tennessee State University on a basketball scholarship, an MBA from Texas Woman’s University, and a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta.
Coaches and pastors have something in common: they show up for people in seasons that have nothing to do with a scoreboard or a sermon calendar. Twelve years of coaching and a decade of shepherding a congregation both taught Sue the same discipline: paying attention to people long enough to notice when something’s wrong and staying present long enough to help.
“I believe that coaching, missions, and pastoral ministry were all preparation for this role, and I’m excited to be part of the OneAscent team and humbled to be here!” Sue said.
It’s a telling example of what OneAscent means when it says its mission is to help stewards thrive in life and legacy, starting with the people inside our own walls. Welcome to OneAscent, Sue.
For more information about OneAscent, please visit https://www.oneascent.com.