#  Becoming an Adaptive, Broad Thinker 

 





**Laura Everett, MDiv '05**, credits HDS with helping her become a broad, adaptive thinker.



 

February 14, 2025

 

 

     ![Laura Everett](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/2025-03/Laura-Everett.jpg?itok=bHIt5yp3) 

Laura Everett, MDiv '05



 



 

*Executive Director, Massachusetts Council of Churches (Boston, MA)*

*View* [*more stories*](/community-life/career-services/alumni-career-snapshots "Alumni Career Snapshots") *on HDS alumni and their career paths.*

## **Describe the work you do today:**

I am a generalist, in the best way. I lead a historic Christian institution in the Massachusetts Council of Churches. I guide the critical repair work of attending to what needs to be changed for us to make the vibrant Church visible. The means everything from figuring out what antiracist HR policy looks like to creating new programs to support the mental health of clergy under our care to designing new modes of fundraising and communication. I get to work with pastors, politicians, and media. I have the most interesting job ever. I'm also a textile artist and sports journalist on the side, but the ministry pays the bills

## **How has your degree influenced your career journey?**

HDS helped me learn how to adapt and think broadly. HDS also set me up well to work in broad and diverse settings. Perhaps most of all, the colleagues from HDS remain regular conversation partners, co-conspirators and companions. I'm applying for a grant with a first year classmate now, 20 years after we met.

## **What career advice do you offer to current HDS students?**

You can be exceedingly and abundantly happy, vocationally satisfied, and intellectually fulfilled without a PhD. Do not fall for the trap that lures you into thinking the only way to fulfillment is more degrees. There are multiple roads to vocational satisfaction. Cambridge is a bubble that tricks you into thinking that you must have more degrees to have worth. You do not. This is a lie. Go do something instead.



 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ Alumni News and Profiles ](/discover-stories-about/alumni-news-and-profiles)