"I looked at other colleges, but Sewanee was a magical place. It still is."
C'04, law school graduation
While the existence of UFOs is debatable, most Sewanee alumni would vouch for the mysterious legitimacy of RSEs (Random Sewanee Encounters). Susan Mashour Diehl, C’83, recalls receiving a surprising Sewanee greeting while teaching law at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. “I was driving home after the first class of the semester, and I got a text from one of my new students,” she says. “It said, ‘OMG! YSR!’ A follow-up conversation provided more clarity: The student, Jamie Taylor, C’04, had graduated from Sewanee with a B.S. in chemistry and couldn’t wait to reach out to his law professor about their shared alma mater. Years later, Diehl sponsored Taylor’s admission to the bar, and she has facilitated his connection with clients through her professional network.
Along with supporting the career trajectories of Sewanee grads, Diehl is a longtime Sewanee Fund donor, and she recently established a significant planned gift. She says she owes her enrollment at the University to a chance meeting—and possibly to a tiny crush. A lifelong Episcopalian, Diehl grew up attending Christ Church Detroit. “As it happened, Robert Ayres, C’49, P’80, P’83, H’74, was part of a group that led a faith weekend at our church in the early 1980s,” she says, adding that Ayres, who was Sewanee’s vice-chancellor at the time, brought his daughter, Vera, C’83, and another University student to the retreat. “I wound up having a little crush on the student [Ayres brought], who sang really beautifully.” Prompted by this Sewanee interaction, Diehl included the University in her college search and eventually applied and was admitted under the Early Decision plan.
just two months before arriving
on the Mountain
Diehl says she intended to major in English but changed her mind after taking a survey course led by Professor of History Anita S. Goodstein, H’94, who taught at the University for more than 25 years. “Her passion changed my perspective.” As she dug into coursework, Diehl became particularly interested in Russia’s early 20th century pivot to communism, and she wrote her honors thesis about Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. She says she continues to appreciate history as a lens for interpreting and navigating current events. “I think history enables us to contextualize current news and say, ‘We’ll be OK. We’ve seen this before.’”
On the extracurricular side, Diehl was president of Sewanee’s Pink Ribbon Society, sang (briefly) in the University Choir, and joined the inaugural class of Alpha Delta Theta and was a DJ for WUTS. She notes that Sewanee offered few team sports for women in the early 1980s—barely a decade had passed since the University’s transition to a coed campus—but she enjoyed being a Tiger cheerleader for a few seasons.
Rivenburgh, in Park City, Utah
While Diehl’s Sewanee class included other students from Michigan, she says she still felt like an outsider at times. At one point, she considered transferring to a larger university for a semester, but her parents encouraged her to stay the course. “They said, ‘In life, you need to be able to figure things out in place—so, figure it out,’” she says. Reflecting on her campus experience, she says she’s glad that today’s Sewanee students have easy access to counseling and self-care programs through University Health Services in the Wellness Commons. “I think mental illness is really prevalent in colleges, and people don’t always honor the enormous pressure and isolation that students can face on campus.” Diehl also applauds the University’s focus on diversity and inclusion.
Diehl at their 40th Sewanee reunion
Following her Sewanee graduation, Diehl earned a J.D. from Wayne State University. She also holds an M.S. in negotiation and conflict resolution from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. After 25 years of practicing and holding corporate leadership positions, she founded Trinitas Advisors, an executive coaching and business advisory firm, in 2009. As one of three partners at the firm, Diehl offers peer-to-peer guidance to leaders across multiple industries, including corporate and nonprofit organizations, as well as colleges and universities. “We make sure there’s good input from everyone on a team,” she says, “and that people aren’t just acquiescing when the leader says, ‘We’re going to go in this direction.’”
Diehl calls her Sewanee education “foundational” to her career success. “When you have that type of rigor in your education, it breeds confidence and competence.” For several decades, she has provided a monthly donation to the Sewanee Fund, and last fall she worked with Director of Gift and Estate Planning Allison Cardwell to set up a generous planned gift. She has also established a need-based scholarship at Wayne State. “My parents placed a strong emphasis on education,” she says, noting that all four of her siblings hold graduate degrees. Philanthropy is a longstanding family value too, she says, pointing to advice that her parents shared with their children. “They always told us, ‘Make sure that before you spend, you give and you save.’”
Andrew, in Chicago in 2022
Cardwell says she’s grateful to Diehl for simultaneously supporting Sewanee’s current needs and ensuring the University’s strong future. “The Sewanee Fund and planned gifts are both critical in enabling Sewanee to flexibly capitalize on opportunities and address challenges,” she says. “Susan’s philanthropy is really exceptional in the way it positions the University for immediate and longer-term success.”
Diehl acknowledges that her Sewanee journey wasn’t always smooth, but she says she’s thankful for the enduring connections it created. “I had some silly crush on a guy who sang at our church, and I ended up at Sewanee,” she notes. “I looked at other colleges, but Sewanee was a magical place. It still is.”
To Learn More About Setting Up a Planned Gift, Email universityrelations@sewanee.edu.
