Title: After Experiencing Homelessness, This Alum Now Shepherds a DC Homeless Shelter

In the fall of 1982, Dennis Dee (C’86, L’89) arrived on the Hilltop and hit the ground running.

He earned a walk-on spot with the track team his first year after practicing alongside its members for months. He buried his head in the books while navigating a tough adjustment to Georgetown classes. Those lessons in hard work would serve him well, he said.

“I learned anything is possible if you work hard at it,” he said. “That mattered later, if you see what happened to me in my late 40s.”

Thirty-two years later, after having graduated from Georgetown Law and building a successful career as an investment banker on Wall Street, Dee found himself knocking on the door of a shelter in Washington, DC. He was homeless and unemployed, and he needed help.

The Fr. McKenna Center, located a few blocks from Georgetown’s Capitol Campus, would become a safe haven for Dee — and eventually, a nonprofit that he would lead.

A Jesuit Partnership in DC

Every Friday, Marianna Mikheyeva (SFS’28) volunteers at the Fr. McKenna Center in downtown DC.

The second-year student guides families to the food pantry and helps them shop for canned goods. She also ensures that the McKenna Center has a steady flow of Hoya volunteers.

In her role as a student coordinator for the Center for Social Justice’s (CSJ) homelessness outreach program (HOME), Mikheyeva manages teams of students who commit to volunteering every week there for a semester. The relationship between the university and the Fr. McKenna Center is important, she says, and she knows the center relies on students to show up.  

“Georgetown is a part of this community, and we want to be present for every member of it,” she said. “It’s great to see that people want to take the time out of their day to help people. And the most valuable thing is the people that you get to interact with very directly.” 

Georgetown has worked with the nonprofit, which was named in honor of Fr. Horace McKenna, S.J., since its founding in 1983. 

Georgetown Law, School of Continuing Studies and McCourt School of Public Policy students volunteer there, medical students give flu shots and test clients’ blood sugar and about 15 undergraduates volunteer there every week through CSJ, with additional students interning in center offices. On Thanksgiving Day, students will serve a Thanksgiving lunch there.

Since Dee took the helm in 2024, the CSJ has worked alongside him to provide a consistent influx of volunteers to give him and his staff more capacity.

“A fundamental part of the HOME program is what can we do to help build your capacity, your needs?” said Ray Shiu, deputy director of CSJ. “Being a double alum himself, I think [Dennis] understands the positionality of the university as an institution but also the ethos that drives why Georgetown does the work that we do.”

A Pivot from Banking to Service

While an undergraduate at Georgetown, Dee’s dream was to become a theology professor at the university after saving up enough money.

His life took a different turn. 

After graduating from Georgetown Law, Dee climbed the corporate ladder, working in law and then for the investment banking firms Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

“All the jobs I had when I graduated college were the jobs you think you’re supposed to want — high-pressure, high-paying. I held it together from the outside … but I was decaying on the inside.”

Dee struggled with alcoholism and manic depression. In 2012, everything came to a head. He lost his seven-figure job and his wife filed for divorce. He lost contact with friends and family. Nine months later, he lost his home. He found himself sleeping on park benches in Florida.

Dee was homeless for two years before he showed up at the Fr. McKenna Center, in hopes of a fresh start. Starting in 2014, he visited the center daily, worked with a case manager and focused on his recovery. He got a job waiting tables at Denny’s. A few months later, the McKenna Center team was so impressed by his dedication that they hired him as a staff member. 

Over the next two years, Dee gradually rebuilt his life. At the McKenna Center, he picked up food donations and orders, assisted shoppers, greeted guests and became a case manager. 

In 2016, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as an addiction counselor at a treatment center for low-income clients for seven years. In 2023, the chair of McKenna’s board of directors contacted him about the executive director role. Returning to the center as its leader, Dee said he’s grateful for the healing role the center played in his life.

“The center’s environment allows a man whose spirit is all but extinguished to be rekindled,” he said upon his return.

Now that he’s back in DC, Dee still feels a special kinship with Georgetown. His parents, many of his siblings and two of his children attended the university. His first son was baptized in Dahlgren Chapel, and his daughter was married there. He even bought a plaque commemorating his parents in Dahlgren Quad.

“For me, Georgetown equals family,” he wrote in an email. “I treat every student volunteer as I would a family member upon their arrival at the Father McKenna Center. In fact, it would not be unusual for me to say, “If you attend Georgetown, you are family to me.”

Students’ Experiences at the Center

Mikheyeva, who volunteers weekly, began working with the McKenna Center last spring. She didn’t want to stop.

She said that often, students are “held at an arm’s length from the actual clients.” Not so at the center. 

“It’s meaningful for me because being able to walk with someone in their shoes, to help shop with them and talk to them, really creates a personal connection with every guest,” she said. “It makes me want to help our clients even more because we know they rely on these support systems. Having such a direct impact on some of our community members is something that’s really important to me.”

For Shiu, Georgetown’s relationship with the McKenna Center not only provides the nonprofit with more capacity and impact, it gives students a chance to bring their studies to life.

“Our students will always get more than they will ever give because I think it’s an opportunity for them to take what they’re learning in classes, learning about being a Hoya and put it into practice,” he said. “Understanding, yes, we’re getting amazing degrees and a world-class education, but to what end? That’s something that they can learn and grow from in different types of community engagement, including the Fr. McKenna Center.”

The McKenna Center is one of eight nonprofits CSJ works with on the Capitol Campus. And while Georgetown has long fostered its work with the center as part of its local engagement and Jesuit identity, the expansion of the Capitol Campus presents even more opportunities, Shiu said.

“They’re literally around the corner from 55 H,” he said. “Now that we’re having a different type of connection in the city with the Capitol Campus — undergraduates in particular — how can we be good neighbors in that way too?”

Animating Georgetown’s Mission

In September, Georgetown Law and School of Continuing Studies graduate students volunteered at the McKenna Center’s food pantry. The event was part of a new Capitol Campus series called “Moments for Mission,” which takes each of Georgetown’s values and animates them through student experiences. After volunteering in the food pantry, students reflected together on the event.

“It’s only a two-hour increment of engagement, but that spark of connection with persons and communities in need … I could tell that there was something churning for some of the students about where they want to go professionally and what matters to them,” said Jamie Kralovec, director for Mission & Ministry on the Capitol Campus, who coordinates closely with Campus Ministry colleagues at the Law Center and on the Hilltop. 

“That spark has unknowable potential to shape and inform students’ discernment about how they want to live out their calling, and also how they want to use the gifts and talents of their Georgetown education in the service of others. These kinds of reflective community-engaged opportunities not only bring our university mission to life on the Capitol Campus but also prepare our students for lives of greater meaning, belonging and purpose.”