The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics, part of the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ECG), is launching a new fellowship program designed for nonprofit leaders who, within the context of their professional work, are confronting ethical challenges that involve the cultivation and expansion of love.
Love Ethic Social Innovator Fellowships will provide funding support for specific projects that allow these practitioners to put love-based ethics into action, generating outcomes that will inform, shape, and improve responses to pressing social, political, and moral challenges across diverse contexts.
Social Innovator Fellows will live and engage at the University of Notre Dame for four weeks, collaborating with ECG faculty and staff as they pursue their projects. The first two fellows, who will be on campus during the month of February, are Scott Hurd, Vice President for Leadership Development and Catholic Identity at Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA), and Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, Executive Director of Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN).
Scott Hurd has been with Catholic Charities USA since 2015. His responsibilities incorporate CCUSA’s O’Grady Leadership Institutes, the University of San Diego’s professional development certificates for Catholic Charities, and programming related to mission alignment, ethics, and diocesan and parish engagement. For the past thirty-two years, he has served in a variety of ecclesiastical leadership roles at the parish, diocesan, and national level. Hurd was board chair of the Catholic Climate Covenant for eight years, currently serves on the Caritas Identity Committee of Caritas Internationalis, and is a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths coach. His books include Forgiveness: A Catholic Approach and Around the Table: Retelling the Story of the Eucharist, and his work has received awards from the Catholic Press Association and the Association of Catholic Publishers. His essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in multiple journals, magazines, and newspapers, and The National Catholic Reporter has featured a number of his essays related to tech ethics and artificial intelligence.
Hurd's project addresses the need that Catholic Charities USA and its member agencies have for ethical guidance around tools and services powered by artificial intelligence (AI). To increase the impact of their services and touch more lives with God’s love, leaders of these agencies seek to use the best tools available. Currently, though, there are no standardized ethical guidelines to help them discern which AI tools are consistent with their organizations’ Catholic identity. Through this fellowship, Hurd plans to develop a comprehensive set of ethical guidelines on AI adoption for the 168 member agencies of Catholic Charities USA that will, in the words of Pope Leo XIV, “reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.”
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy serves as the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), where she oversees the organization’s strategic direction and priorities. Since 2017, Vaillancourt Murphy has championed CMN’s trailblazing mission to end the death penalty and advance justice solutions that align with Catholic values through restorative practices and approaches. She drives anti-death penalty and restorative justice formation programming through strategic initiatives, state and federal advocacy, and in collaboration with an extensive network of more than 30,000 advocates, including Catholic bishops, dioceses, state Catholic conferences, religious communities, lay ministry leaders, and people of goodwill from across the nation. Vaillancourt Murphy has 30 years of experience working in national-level, faith-based policy advocacy. She is the co-author of Advocating for Justice: An Evangelical Vision for Transforming Systems and Structures and is frequently quoted on matters of capital punishment and restorative justice in media sources such as the New York Times, CNN, OSV News, America Magazine, Aleteia, National Catholic Reporter, Catholic News Agency, EWTN News Nightly, USA Today, and is a regular contributor to Vatican News.
Vaillancourt Murphy's project will focus on the need for effective, pro-life evangelization and storytelling. In today's increasingly revenge-oriented society, competing narratives exist regarding how people of faith should respond to harm. In the United States, reactions to the issue of the death penalty epitomize this narrative competition. Through this fellowship, Vaillancourt Murphy will explore ways in which CMN can amplify the Church’s pro-life teaching about capital punishment and create pathways toward forgiveness and restoration in its work to end the death penalty. Thoughtful narratives and deliberate language that align with Catholic values will assist CMN in deepening its ethical grounding, advancing justice responses, and promoting healing across the country.
Both Hurd and Vaillancourt Murphy will present their work to the public at the end of their residential fellowships.
Sponsored by a transformative grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Love Ethic Social Innovator Fellowship program will expand in the future. If you are interested in learning more, details and applications are available at ethics.nd.edu/fellowships-and-grants/social-innovator-fellowships/.
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The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics supports preeminent scholars whose research advances human flourishing in both moral and spiritual contexts, facilitates the development of undergraduate courses exploring topics such as justice and the common good, and deepens the ethical formation of Notre Dame students and faculty. The center also plays a transformative role in public discussion, drawing citizens into meaningful dialogue informed by virtue ethics — one of the most powerful and enduring contributions of the Catholic philosophical tradition.
The Institute for Ethics and the Common Good is at the heart of the Ethics Initiative, a University-wide effort to establish Notre Dame as a premier global destination for the study of ethics. Under the leadership of Meghan Sullivan, Ethics Initiative director and Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy, the institute focuses on cross-disciplinary ethics research, undergraduate course development, the moral formation of its students and faculty, and engaging the public in meaningful dialogue around ethical issues.