Although she has been with us since she came on as our Vision & Call Marketing & Design Intern in 2018, we would like to formally introduce our Donor Relations Specialist, Mindy (Braasch) Schutza!

She is originally from Athens, Ohio, the home of Ohio University, where her parents met. Growing up, she spent a lot of time traveling to her mom’s native country Malaysia, spending one or two months every year there between the ages of 10 to 17. This annual immersion in a different culture really helped to expand her worldview, something that would come in handy for her future role at Blood:Water.

She came to Nashville in 2012, where she worked full-time as a singer/songwriter, even opening a show for Steven Tyler of Aerosmith! Something else that was really cool about this time in her life was she got the chance to lobby for songwriter rights in Washington D.C with the Director of the Nashville Songwriters Association International. In 2015, she began attending Belmont University where she shifted gears and moved into visual art and design. One of her professors posted about an internship opportunity at Blood:Water, and the rest is history!

Mindy has a cat named Goshen that she adores, and in her spare time enjoys painting, traveling, and spending time with her husband, Joshua, with whom she recently celebrated her first wedding anniversary! She LOVES chocolate (hint hint), but if she had to choose a “real food,” she also likes sushi. 

She can quote practically any line from How I Met Your Mother because of the sheer number of times she’s seen every episode, and her favorite movie is Stardust. She loves reading (especially fantasy novels), and has too many favorite books to count. But to name a few, she likes Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas, and Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

Mindy does a ton at Blood:Water as the first point of contact for donors and fundraisers, an integral part of day-to-day operations. This includes communicating our mission and the amazing work our African partners do and cheering on our incredible supporters!

We are so grateful for all of her work and she is excited to be here, saying, “The Blood:Water staff is a group of passionate, driven individuals who are committed to building up our African partners in order to foster sustainable change. I love the integrity of this organization – the fact that Blood:Water truly does what it says we’ll do in our mission statement is a powerful thing.” 

Thanks for all your hard work, Mindy!