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Talking to Kathleen Merkel is like talking to an old friend; she’s warm, engaging and hangs on to every word. It’s that compassion for other people that’s taken the Omaha native around the world dozens of times as a Catholic Relief Services humanitarian worker. But on this particular day, she’s scrambling to remember how to pack for an international trip.
After resigning from her position at CRS in 2022, attending the University of Nebraska Medical Center for nursing school, and landing a position at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in February, she’s admittedly a little out of practice. Though after 14 years with CRS and traveling to more than 50 countries, it came back to her rather quickly.
Merkel attended Skutt Catholic High School, where she says they still have a photo of her “sitting on a rickety boat in Bangladesh,” almost like their poster child of the perfect student. After graduation, she got her Master of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha before accepting a job at First National Bank, which she called “a lovely introduction to professional life.” There, she met her husband, Arvind Thapar, while working in the international group doing trade finance.
But there was one problem: deep down, all she really wanted to do was travel and help people—it felt like her true calling.
“I didn’t get to go to any of the places that I was emailing,” she said. “It was a burning ‘I will perish if I don’t do this’ kind of thing.”
So Merkel put her résumé online and spent about six months “contemplating and dreaming.” Then CRS called, looking for MBAs.
“I didn't even know you could do humanitarian work as a job,” she admitted. “I thought you had to be a nun or join the Peace Corps.”
Merkel happily accepted a job with CRS in 2008 and got to work. Armed with the organization’s mission to “assist the poor and vulnerable overseas,” Merkel headed for Bangladesh as the project manager for disaster recovery, her first overseas assignment.
“There was a cyclone that had come through, a pretty devastating one,” she remembered. “The program was a shelter reconstruction in these little villages for about 2,000 houses. I had to track the budget and make sure we were doing all the reporting and everything that goes into project planning and execution. In the meantime, I’m just sticking my foot in my mouth with no idea what I’m doing, but it was lovely.”
For two years, Merkel learned the ropes as she stumbled down her newly forged path. By this time, she and Thapar were engaged, making her time away an obstacle, but not a deal-breaker.
“The twist is he’s from India,” she said. “I got to meet his family for the first time while I was over there without him. Having no sense of, like, any of the cultural norms, I was just tromping all over, but they were so gracious. But Arvind and I did all these pre-wedding honeymoon type things, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We met up in Mauritius, so we did get some really beautiful trips in during that time.”
As Merkel’s international adventures continued, she had quickly evolved into a professional traveler. Her last trip with Catholic Relief Services was in 2015 to Nepal, where she was head of the country program after a devastating earthquake killed 8,962 people, injured 21,952, and flattened entire villages.
“There was a certain amount of equanimity that I had at that point, where I had done these shelter projects before, and I knew there was such a human side to the staff. It was just so clear how much they were working for their country, their community, and trying to elevate people.”
Heartbreak and hope were intertwined with every project Merkel did. Despite the often challenging circumstances, experiencing such strong emotions simultaneously prepared her for a career in nursing.
“I used to fly into a very vulnerable stage of a community, when they’re starting to rebuild and pick up the pieces,” she said. “It’s a very traumatized community. On my floor, we work with a lot of post-surgical patients, mostly in oncology…They can get a shocking diagnosis, but then have hope after surgery. We get to be a part of their first relief efforts.”
Maybe one day, Merkel will take all of the journals she kept during her travels and compile them into a book. But not yet—she still has more chapters to write.
For more information, visit crs.org.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
