Dan Minea ’14 receives 4 Under 40 Alumni Achievement Award

Dan Minea ’14 first visited Bethel’s campus for a middle school church league basketball game, and Bethel barely registered as a possibility for the future. Years later, as Minea searched for a spot to compete in track and study business, Bethel resurfaced. Minea skipped the traditional tour, and enrolled without realizing exactly what was meant by “faith-centered.”

Minea recalls feeling different and seeing things differently than others did, because they were “scrappy, poor, and not a legacy student.” But instead of feeling singled out or discounted, there was just love and acceptance.

“I had no idea how faith-based it was. I thought, ‘oh, dang, people are praying in class. What?!’ I found this whole culture that was wildly different from anything I’d experienced before, and I felt loved on,” Minea says. “It started to shape me.”

In the business marketing major, they began to learn the tenets of business, alongside thoughtful Christians who didn’t just care about the bottom line, but about disrupting the status quo on behalf of their neighbors. Minea was inspired by highly-invested professors and personally mentored by former president Jay Barnes. It’s an experience they say breathed new life and excitement into their life amidst a personal struggle with depression.

“Feeling love and belonging is what makes life beautiful. I got to be planted in that soil in an intentional culture that was created by staff, faculty, and leadership,” Minea says. “From the top down, people were breathing big dreams into us, ones we were able to make tangible. Learning theology and critical thinking in classes oriented me to deconstruct Christianity and culture to build something even more expansive and inclusive than I thought possible. We all felt on-mission together, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wanting to make a difference.”

After graduation, Minea went to work in advertising, wanting to “be a light” in an industry where people wouldn’t necessarily share the same values. At Latitude Agency in Minneapolis, Dan experienced an organization that was radically generous with its profits, but they ultimately felt called to a media career with Viacom in Chicago. Though it didn’t end up being a fit for Minea long-term, the relocation made them fall in love with the rich diversity of the Uptown neighborhood. Minea was instantly drawn in, and began to realize their true calling.

“Bethel built into me a type of ‘figure-it-outness.’ I began to lean on my mentors and ask big questions and love on my neighbors experiencing homelessness,” Minea explains. “I realized that making a difference in that community was less about providing a resource, but being in a relationship in which beauty and love shines.”

For six months, Minea and their roommate Adam Gianforte—an eclectic Ivy League graduate who had just unicycled from Canada to Mexico to raise money for International Justice Mission—did everything they could to be present in the community and understand its history and what it had to offer. Minea spent over four years building relationships, experiencing poverty in the most racially and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. 

Minea took on a variety of organic and volunteer roles, getting a better understanding of how nonprofits are set up, how they can market themselves and make data-driven impact. And they began running marathons and ultramarathons to benefit World Vision, bringing in over $50,000 in funds and eventually leading to an international videography position. All the while, the two were building an intentional outreach that would eventually become Collective Chicago. 

The Collective provides affordable, felony-friendly housing within one of the toughest markets in the country; therapy services; and professional development and attire for unhoused men of all kinds of backgrounds. Since last year, Collective has housed and employed 15 guys with the help of over 50 intentional community partners—including Krueger Consulting, How Men Cry, and Holistically Divine Counseling. And because there’s far more demand than the Collective has units to house, it’s also helped over a hundred additional Chicagoans develop their resumes and complete personalized budgeting workshops. With an eye on strategy, sustainability, and diversity of thought, Collective’s growing Advocacy Board includes Bethel alumni Dan Wanous '15, Geoff Turgeon '14, and Brad Krueger '14. The board provides a forum to leverage their collective privilege, and the Bethel network, for the good of their guys.

Collective’s residential community is set up in a highly relational, trauma-informed way, with live-in leaders and life-on-life accountability that buck the transactional nature of failed housing programs the city has seen over the years. Seventy percent of Collective residents have criminal records. Nationally, 30 percent of prior offenders will be rearrested within two years, and that statistic climbs to 48 percent in five years. But at Collective, an incredible 93 percent of program grads from the last five years are still housed and stable. Most remain connected in some way to the residential community. 

Minea recalls one resident who responded to a Collective housing ad, but thought the unit looked too good to be true. He told a friend to check on him if he wasn’t back out an hour after his interview.

“He thought we were a cult or something, and slept with a golf club when he first moved in,” Minea says, with a chuckle that quickly turns serious. “He literally didn’t know that there were still good people out there. As a leader, who cares what your morning routine looks like? This is so much more about loving people for who they are.”

Nominate the next 4 Under 40 recipients!

Bethel University’s National Alumni Board annually seeks and accepts nominations for the 4 Under 40 Alumni Achievement Award. The selection is made from Bethel University graduates 40 years of age or younger who have had outstanding achievements in their career, public service, or volunteer activities.