The Global Engagement Summit was born from an email.   It was the longest email Jon Marino ever received.  While Jon Marino was studying abroad in South Africa during his junior year at Northwestern, his friend Nathaniel Whittemore asked Jon to help him create an organization that would mobilize students’ energy to contribute to positive global change.  For the next year, they brainstormed, planned and co-founded GES. (Then known as the International Youth Volunteerism Summit.)

In February of 2006, with the support of staff and the Northwestern community, GES successfully hosted its first conference. The next challenge for Jon and Nathaniel was building upon this success. “Doing something once is the easy part. The real question is how do you sustain it?” Marino said.  Together Jon and Nathaniel founded the Center for Global Engagement that has now evolved into the Global Engagement Summer Institute.

Jon says that his “belief in the power of students to be positive agents of change,” inspired him to lead GES. “Through GES we invested in students’ abilities to be involved as leaders, not just passive onlookers.”

After leaving Northwestern in 2008, Jon extended his efforts to unite people and make change in the world as a Fulbright Scholar in Uganda. He worked with the Refugee Law Project, which, according to its mission, “seeks a country that treats all people within its borders with the same standards of respect and social justice.”   Most recently, Jon moved to Galway, Ireland to accompany his wife Lauren, a GES founding member herself, who was recently named one of the twelve U.S. Mitchell Scholars for 2009-10. He’s enjoying the Irish culture and has decided to pursue a Masters in philosophy from the National University of Ireland in Galway while Lauren completes her Mitchell. He’s excited about the challenge of connecting moral and political philosophy to the notions of globalization, justice, and community that he has spent so much time thinking about over the years.

In the years since he helped found GES, Jon has been inspired by the vast improvements new staffs have implemented. “I feel like a fan of GES, and I love to watch its momentum and energy build over time,” Marino said. “As GES improves and fulfills its mission to build a community of committed change-agents, it gives me-and lots of other recent graduates-a sense of hope.”