Jeannie (Gehrz) Nasers (’17, ’26) was raised in a three-bedroom house in Saint Paul, MN, with her parents and seven siblings.
It was cramped. To Nasers, it was no big deal. Aside from 10 people, what filled the house was unconditional love.
It’s that love, warmth, strength, and support of a family nucleus that Nasers spreads to women with unintended pregnancies and childless couples when they enter the doors of Christian Adoptive Services in Bismarck. Nasers is the executive director of the non-profit, which has provided Christ-centered direct adoption services in North Dakota and Minnesota since 1985.
“We demonstrate God's love to all those who are impacted by these life-altering decisions,” Nasers says. “When a woman is faced with an unintended pregnancy and if she's abortion vulnerable, the first thing we have to do is help her recognize the truth that she's a mother and her number-one responsibility is to keep her child safe.”
In the direct adoption process, expectant parents choose the adoptive parents for the child.
“They determine that adoption is what they desire, but you're a birth parent for life, “ she says. “The reality of the relationship between a mother and a child and a father and a child is designed by God to be lifelong!”
Nasers didn’t see herself running a non-profit agency when she graduated from an all-girls Catholic high school. She took a year off to work as a nanny and barista. At the time, she was considering attending a Catholic university out of state, until her sister’s boss told her about the new Catholic studies program underway at the University of Mary.
That fall she was enrolled in nursing and Catholic studies, but two months into her first semester, she was diagnosed with Hodgkins’s lymphoma. She returned to Saint Paul to begin eight months of chemotherapy and radiation. She was declared in remission in May of 2013.
She could have continued her college career at home, with her parents’ care and support, but in just two months at Mary she had formed close friendships, and university had stayed in contact and helped rework her class schedule.
“Monsignor Shea even wrote me a personal letter,” Nasers said. “Everyone was so gracious and supportive — that’s what brought me back.”
Nasers returned to Bismarck but dropped nursing as a major. She still wanted to care for people, so social work was a natural replacement. She minored in Catholic studies, as well, where she met her husband, Luke, ’16, ’19. They married in 2016 and have five children.
Nasers has always believed God has a plan for her, and His hand was guiding her to use her skills, compassion, faith, and motherly love to ease the burden of unintended pregnancies by uniting newborns with welcoming two-parent homes.
“The University of Mary provided the foundation,” she says. “It's not just the education; it's the sturdiness of character required for this work. It's not for the faint of heart. If your identity is not rooted in your relationship with God, then you can't sustain this. The university’s faithfulness really helped set me up for success.”
In the spring of 2026, Nasers crossed the stage again at the university’s 65th Commencement as a graduate in the first cohort of the Master of Social Work program. She also presented the welcome message early in the ceremony.
“There's just something about the ‘faithfully Christian, joyfully Catholic, and gratefully Benedictine’ piece of the university’s identity,” she says. “The social work profession was born out of Christian values. I knew I was supposed to bring my faith into the world — University of Mary helped to put that on my heart.”