ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Two new members — Mark Ouweleen and Gloria Purvis — have joined the Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA) Board of Directors. Purvis and Ouweleen began their service in January.
Ouweleen, a partner at Partner Bartlit Beck LLP, is a trial lawyer who has litigated and tried high stakes civil cases across the country for over thirty years. He handles a wide range of cases, including product liability, patent, antitrust, contract, and environmental matters.
Before joining Bartlit Beck LLP, Ouweleen graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Before law school he studied English literature at Georgetown and at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He has served on the boards of directors of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where he is immediate past chairman. Ouweleen and his wife, Sarah Harding, have three adult children (Bram, Liam, and Isabel) and a great dane, Islay.
Purvis is an author, commentator and the host and executive producer of The Gloria Purvis Podcast at America Media. Through her media presence, she has been a strong Catholic voice for life issues, religious liberty and racial justice. Purvis has appeared in numerous media outlets including the New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS Newshour, NPR, Newsweek and Catholic Answers Live, and she hosted Morning Glory, an international morning radio show. She was Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic of the Year for 2020 and recipient of the St. Edmund’s Medal of Honor by St. Edmund’s Retreat in Enders Island, Connecticut. She presented a powerful video series, Racism, Human Dignity and The Catholic Church, through the Word on Fire Institute and was a contributor to the movie Heart of A Servant: The Father Flanagan Story.
In 2022, Purvis was part of a groundbreaking, exclusive interview with Pope Francis with a delegation from America Media. Last year, she delivered one of the keynote speeches at the historic National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. She is the Inaugural Pastoral Fellow at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and has received honorary doctorates from the University of Portland in Oregon and from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.
CCUSA is a national membership organization that supports and represents 168 Catholic Charities agencies across the United States. The members of CCUSA’s board, drawn from a cross section of the social service and corporate worlds, provide thoughtful oversight and governance of CCUSA and its strategic initiatives. The board includes independent directors, like Purvis and Ouweleen, as well as diocesan directors of Catholic Charities agencies from around the country.
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