Julie Jones Manning
Vice President of Marketing
Samaritan Health Services

Julie Jones Manning grew up the oldest of four daughters in the rural Clackamas County community of Rhododendron, at the foot of Mount Hood.  She is defined more than anything by a sense of place and public purpose – and credits her parents for it.

Her father was a physical education and health teacher and boys’ basketball coach, but more than that he was the “teacher whom kids sought out for support and counsel.” While at home he inspired his daughters to believe they could do anything they wish and define the goals to do so.

Her mom? Manning calls her “the quintessential mother”– so much so that she was “the ‘Dear Abbey’ of the neighborhood, because she was so giving to anyone who needed help.”

The roles they established were powerful models Manning says she could aspire to, because “Both of my parents offered us a sense of possibility.”

And that plays out today, with tangible consequence for Manning and her numerous communities. Her home for the last 22 years has been Corvallis, Oregon, where she is vice president of marketing, public relations and development for Samaritan Health Services.

In 2000, she co-chaired the political action committee that won voter approval of a bond measure to renovate the neglected Willamette River waterfront. What was a hodgepodge of warehouses, gravel parking lots and overgrown vegetation now comprises 10 city blocks of paved bike paths, river views, fountains, benches, gardens, restaurants, shops and soon-to-be completed condominiums – an eyesore turned heavenly for locals and tourists. Chalk it up to a sense of possibility.

Two years later, she co-chaired another advocacy effort that won voter passage of an $85 million bond measure to build a new high school and middle school while repairing others. “It has been so rewarding to have been part of such projects in which we have achieved real results,” Manning says from her Samaritan Health offices. "Volunteerism is essential for the growth of the community and the betterment of society.”

One of Manning’s current projects is serving as the co-chair for Literacy Partners, a middle school literacy program, created by E3: Employers for Education Excellence, that rolled out in the Corvallis school district fall of 2006.  Manning is at work pairing at least 40 volunteers from Corvallis businesses with middle school children. Lately she has been meeting with Corvallis employers and asking them to allow their employees to volunteer one hour of their time weekly to read with a child.  It is an outreach that will have quiet but profound consequence.

“This is a very important project, because too many of our students in middle school are falling off in their reading skills,” says Manning. “Reading well is one of the foundations for good communications.” Manning’s conviction goes further, however: Education is the foundation for every child’s growth and creates good citizens. It also opens doors, as it did for Manning when she left her home town of Sandy for college in Portland, at Lewis & Clark.

A choir singer in high school, Manning planned to major in music and education - hoping to one day become a music teacher. But after taking a communications course taught by Jean Ward, her aspirations changed. “A light went on in my mind, and it took only a few seconds for me to realize that communications was the basis for everything in life,” says Manning. “Suddenly I wanted to know more. In part it was the subject but in part it was Jean. She was so passionate about the subject, and she had such an engaging way of delivering the information.” The love of music never went away; although she would major in communications and minor in education, Manning currently sings with the Corvallis Repertory Singers.

But new lights kept switching on for Manning. Along the way she picked up a master’s degree in journalism and wrote for newspapers before switching to professional communications work for a burgeoning hospital system.
And now she even serves on the board of directors for E3: Employers for Education Excellence. It all makes for personal satisfaction, of the generous kind she learned from her parents back in Sandy – and perhaps the exciting kind exemplified by her college teacher Jean Ward.

“I love my job, and I love helping the community,” she says, matter-of-factly. “I am grateful for the opportunity that I have to do things I really enjoy.”