From oppression to opportunity

Online learning instructors care about your success too!

Pierre Atilio

It was a phone call Pierre Atilio no doubt wishes he never made. He was simply trying to collect the pension of his late father, but it would prove to be a call that would change his life in ways he could never have imagined — for good . . . and for bad.

First came the bad.

Pierre, who is from the city of Juba in southern Sudan, had called the Sudanese government to collect his father's pension. His father had been executed after being implicated in a military coup against Sudan's National Islamic Front government in 1992. Now, with one phone call, Pierre was fingered as a traitor as well.

"The government implicated me and said that I was supporting my dad and that I was a rebel," he recalls. "My life was really in danger. They wanted to kill me."

Pierre knew he had no choice but to flee or he would meet the same fate as his dad. He crossed illegally into Ethiopia before eventually winding up in a refugee camp in Kenya, an experience he soberly describes as a "very, very difficult life." He spent a year in that refugee camp, but eventually was allowed to find work in Kenya's capital of Nairobi.

A former Catholic seminarian, Pierre spent several years in Nairobi working for humanitarian organizations, often traveling back to Sudan as an emergency field officer to combat the ongoing humanitarian crisis there. But he never felt safe. Certainly not when back in Sudan, but not even when in Nairobi.

"Even in Kenya, my life was in danger," he says.

In order to truly be safe, to build the life he envisioned for himself and his wife, Pierre knew he would have to travel far from east Africa. But it wasn't as easy a decision as it might seem.

"I didn't want to leave Africa. I didn't want to come to the U.S. because of the way the media claims a black person becomes a second class citizen in the U.S.," Pierre remembers. "But when I came to the U.S., it was not like what I used to hear. For me it was an opportunity, and I accepted it."

He found that opportunity in West Fargo, North Dakota. Certainly a long way from his home in Sudan, Pierre describes his adopted home in America as "a very, very good community," although he admits his first winter took some getting used to.

Once in America, Pierre quickly got to work building that life he always dreamed of. Having earned a bachelor's degree and a post-graduate diploma while in Nairobi, he decided to go back to school to earn a master's degree in management from University of Mary, North Dakota State.

But Pierre wasn't finished yet.

Determined to earn his doctorate, Pierre enrolled a PhD program in business, but left after a month to pursue a degree that was more in line with his interests.

"I said to myself, 'Do I really need a PhD in business? I need something humanitarian. All my life I have been a humanitarian,'" Pierre says.

Then he discovered Capella University. Pierre said Capella's regional accreditation attracted him to the school, and once he learned about Capella's School of Human Services, he was sold.

Today, Pierre - who works as a program coordinator at Cultural Diversity Resources in Fargo - is earning a PhD at Capella with a specialization in social and community services. He expects to graduate in 2008.

"Getting a degree online, I feel like I am on the cutting edge. I like being a pioneer. I find myself writing so much more than you do at traditional universities, and I feel like I am really becoming a true scholar. I find myself learning about my colleagues so much more, and I end up really learning about new concepts and widening my horizons. That is the beauty of online education."

Even with all he has been through, Pierre has dreams of using his PhD to land a job at the United Nations and travel back to Sudan, continuing his work providing humanitarian assistance to those in need. But he stresses that he will not be going back as a Sudanese. Rather, he will be going as an American.