Epiphany – June 5, 2023
Monica Yatooma co-founded Great Schools initiative and is passionate about protecting our kids. Mary Suddath and Elizabeth Moran share their open adoption story.Â
Segment 1
Monica Yatooma co-founded Great Schools initiative and is passionate about protecting our kids. Mary Suddath and Elizabeth Moran share their open adoption story.
Monica Yatooma is a wife and business owner born and raised right here in Michigan. She proudly graduated from Oakland University with a BA in psychology and now runs a very successful medical waste business alongside her husband that operates state wide. Most importantly, Monica is a mother of 3 beautiful children and standing up for them over the last few years has led her to be a fierce advocate in Michigan education as she co-founded the non-profit, Great Schools Initiative, where she serves as the Director of Partner Relations. Monica has extensive fundraising and community outreach experience and this experience has helped her to grow GSI and become the successful movement in education that it is today.
Learn more about Monica and Great Schools Initiative here: Great Schools Initiative
Segment 2
Mary Suddath and Elizabeth Moran share their open adoption story.
Mary Suddath RN BSN hails from Richmond Hill, Georgia. She recently retired after forty-four years of nursing, having spent the last thirty-eight years as a pediatric critical-care nurse in Savannah. Mary is originally from Massachusetts, where she graduated from Burbank Hospital School of Nursing and Fitchburg State University. She has been a communicant at St. Anne in Richmond Hill for twenty-seven years and currently serves on the parish council.
Mary and her husband Matt have been married for forty-four years and have three children and one grandchild who is on the autism spectrum. They homeschooled all of their children. During her time working at the hospital, Mary served as a bioethics nurse liaison, was a faculty member of the clinical pastoral education program, and frequent preceptor to new graduates and new hires. She was a member of the Aging Services Advisory Council and was an adoption advisory board member for Catholic Social Services. She and Matt are former foster parents and also adoptive parents and are strong proponents of open adoption.
More recently, Mary was part of a medical mission team that brought special-needs pilgrims and their families to Lourdes, France and was named an ambassador for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospitality, North American Lourdes Volunteers. Mary is very open to all the ways she can serve Jesus and His mother during this new season of retirement.
Elizabeth Moran  is from the Atlanta area. She was raised in a devote Catholic family and attended Catholic school from Kindergarten thru high school. Elizabeth attended Salem College until the end of her junior year, when she dropped out to have her birth daughter, Hanna. After choosing adoption and ultimately choosing an open adoption with Matt and Mary, Elizabeth felt a profound need to become an advocate for other young women. This calling did not fully manifest until many years later. In the mean time, Elizabeth began her career at a financial company, working her way into Human Resources. She had another beautiful daughter and began shifting her focus to volunteerism and parent involvement at school. Recognizing the value and gift of Catholic education, Elizabeth chose to send her daughter to Catholic schools as well. When her daughter left for college, Elizabeth once again felt a strong pull towards supporting women in unexpected or crisis pregnancies. Today, Elizabeth balances her time between family, work, and volunteering as an advocate at a pregnancy resource center.
